CHAPTER 29
The evening after the funeral, my young lady and I were seated in the library, musing mournfully on our loss and the gloomy future.
We had just agreed that it would be best if Catherine were permitted to continue living at the Grange; at least during Linton’s life: he being allowed to join her there, and I to remain as housekeeper. That seemed rather too favourable an arrangement to hope for; and yet I did hope, and began to cheer up under the prospect; when a servant rushed hastily in, and said ‘that devil Heathcliff’ was coming through the court: should he fasten the door in his face?
Even if we had been mad enough to do that, we had not time. He made no ceremony of knocking or announcing his name: he was master, and availed himself of the master’s privilege to walk straight in, without saying a word. Hearing our voices in the library, he entered and shut the door.
It was the same room into which he had been ushered, as a guest, eighteen years before: the same moon shone through the window; and the same autumn landscape lay outside. We had not yet lighted a candle, but the portraits on the wall were visible: the splendid head of Mrs. Linton, and the graceful one of her husband.
Heathcliff advanced to the hearth. Time had little altered his appearance either. His dark face was rather sallower and more composed, his frame a stone or two heavier, perhaps; no other difference.
Catherine had risen, meaning to dash out.
‘Stop!’ he said, arresting her by the arm. ‘No more running away! I’m come to fetch you home; and I hope you’ll be a dutiful daughter and not encourage my son to further disobedience. I was embarrassed how to punish him: he’s such a cobweb, a pinch would annihilate him; but he’s received his due! I just set him in a chair, and never touched him. I sent Hareton out, and we had the room to ourselves.
‘After two hours, I called Joseph to carry him up again; and ever since then my presence is as potent on his nerves as a ghost; and I fancy he sees me often, though I am not near. Hareton says he wakes and shrieks in the night by the hour together, and calls you to protect him from me; and, whether you like your precious mate, or not, you must come.’
‘Why not let Catherine stay here,’ I pleaded, ‘and send Master Linton to her? You’d not miss them.’
‘I’m seeking a tenant for the Grange,’ he answered; ‘and I want my children about me. Besides, that lass owes me her services for her bread. I’m not going to keep her in luxury and idleness after Linton is gone. Make haste and get ready, now.’
‘I shall,’ said Catherine. ‘Linton is all I have to love in the world, and though you have tried to make us hate each other, you cannot do it. And I defy you to hurt him when I am by, and I defy you to frighten me!’
‘You are a boastful champion,’ replied Heathcliff; ‘but I don’t like you well enough to hurt him: you shall get the full benefit of him. It is not I who will make him hateful to you – it is his own sweet spirit. He’s as bitter as gall at your desertion: don’t expect thanks for your devotion.’
‘I know he has a bad nature,’ said Catherine: ‘he’s your son. But I’m glad I’ve a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me, and for that reason I love him. Mr. Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery. You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you – nobody will cry for you when you die! I wouldn’t be you!’
Catherine spoke with a kind of dreary triumph: she seemed to have made up her mind to enter into the spirit of her future family, and draw pleasure from the griefs of her enemies.
‘You shall be sorry to be yourself presently,’ said her father-in-law, ‘if you stand there another minute. Begone, witch, and get your things!’
She scornfully withdrew. I began to beg for Zillah’s place at the Heights, offering to resign mine to her; but he bid me be silent; and then glanced round the room and looked at the pictures.
Having studied Mrs. Linton’s, he said, ‘I shall take that home. Not because I need it, but—’ He turned abruptly to the fire, and continued, with what, for lack of a better word, I must call a smile:
‘I’ll tell you what I did yesterday! I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought I would have stayed there: when I saw her face again – it is hers yet! – he had hard work to move me; but he said it would change if the air blew on it, and so I struck one side of the coffin loose, and covered it up: not Linton’s side, damn him! I wish he’d been soldered in lead. And I bribed the sexton to pull it away when I’m laid there, and slide mine out too; I’ll have it made so. By the time Linton gets to us he’ll not know which is which!’
‘You were very wicked, Mr. Heathcliff!’ I exclaimed; ‘were you not ashamed to disturb the dead?’
‘I disturbed nobody, Nelly,’ he replied; ‘and I gave some ease to myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you’ll have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years – incessantly – remorselessly – till yesternight; and yesternight I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.’
‘And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then?’ I said.
‘Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still!’ he answered. ‘Do you suppose I dread any change of that sort? I expected it on raising the lid – but I’m pleased that it should not commence till I share it. You know I was wild after she died; and from dawn to dawn, prayed her to return to me – her spirit. I have a strong faith in ghosts: I have a conviction that they can, and do, exist among us!
‘The day she was buried, there came a fall of snow. In the evening I went to the churchyard: it blew bleak as winter – all round was solitary. Being alone, and conscious two yards of loose earth was the sole barrier between us, I said to myself– “I’ll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I’ll think it is this north wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep.”
‘I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my might – it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood began cracking about the screws. I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave. “If I can only get this off,” I muttered, “I wish they may shovel in the earth over us both!” and I wrenched at it more desperately still.
‘There was another sigh, close at my ear. I seemed to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleet-laden wind. I knew no living thing was by; I felt that Cathy was there: not under me, but on the earth. A sudden sense of relief flowed from my heart through every limb. I gave up my labour, and turned consoled at once: unspeakably consoled. Her presence was with me while I re-filled the grave; it led me home. You may laugh, if you will; but I was sure I should see her there. I was sure she was with me, and I could not help talking to her.
‘Having reached the Heights, I rushed eagerly to the door. It was fastened; and that accursed Earnshaw and my wife opposed my entrance. I remember stopping to kick the breath out of him, and then hurrying upstairs, to my room and hers. I looked round impatiently – I felt her by me – I could almost see her, and yet I could not! I ought to have sweated blood then, from the anguish of my yearning, as I prayed fervently to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me!
‘And, since then, I’ve been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal! keeping my nerves at an agonising stretch. When I sat in the house with Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I walked on the moors I should meet her coming in. When I went from home I hastened to return; she must be somewhere at the Heights, I was certain!
‘And when I tried to sleep in her chamber, I was beaten back; for
the moment I closed my eyes, she was either outside the window, or sliding back the panels, or entering the room, or even resting her darling head on the pillow; and I must open my lids to see. And so I opened and closed them a hundred times a night – to be always disappointed! It racked me! I groaned aloud, till that old rascal Joseph no doubt believed that my conscience was playing the fiend. Now, since I’ve seen her, I’m pacified – a little. It was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen years!’
Mr. Heathcliff paused and wiped his forehead; his hair clung to it, wet with perspiration. His eyes were fixed on the red embers of the fire, the brows raised, giving him a peculiar look of trouble, and a painful appearance of mental tension. He only half addressed me, and I kept silence. I didn’t like to hear him talk! After a short time he took the picture down and leant it against the sofa to study it better.
Meanwhile Catherine entered, announcing that she was ready, as soon as her pony should be saddled.
‘Send that over tomorrow,’ said Heathcliff to me; then turning to her, he added: ‘You’ll need no ponies at Wuthering Heights; your own feet will serve you. Come along.’
‘Good-bye, Ellen!’ whispered my dear little mistress. As she kissed me, her lips felt like ice. ‘Come and see me, Ellen; don’t forget.’
‘Do no such thing, Mrs. Dean!’ said her new father. ‘When I wish to speak to you I’ll come here. I want none of your prying at my house!’
As she left, she cast back a look that cut my heart. From the window I watched them walk down the garden into the alley, where trees concealed them.