CHAPTER 31
Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty. I went to the Heights as I proposed: my housekeeper entreated me to take a note from her to her young lady, and I agreed.
The front door stood open, but the gate was fastened. I called Earnshaw from the garden-beds; he unchained it, and I entered. The fellow is a handsome rustic. I took more notice of him this time; but he makes little of his advantages.
I asked if Mr. Heathcliff were at home? He answered, No; but he would be in at dinner-time. It was eleven o’clock, and I announced that I would go in and wait. He flung down his tools and accompanied me, in the office of watchdog.
We entered together. Catherine was preparing some vegetables; she looked more sulky and less spirited than when I had seen her first. She hardly raised her eyes, and never returned my bow and good-morning.
‘She does not seem so amiable as Mrs. Dean says,’ I thought. ‘She’s a beauty, but not an angel.’
Earnshaw surlily bid her remove her things to the kitchen. ‘Remove them yourself,’ she said, going to a stool by the window, where she began to carve figures of birds and beasts out of the turnip-parings in her lap. I approached her, and, as I fancied, adroitly dropped Mrs. Dean’s note on to her knee, unnoticed by Hareton – but she asked aloud, ‘What is that?’ and chucked it off.
‘A letter from the housekeeper at the Grange,’ I answered; annoyed, and fearful lest it should be imagined a message of my own. She would gladly have gathered it up then, but Hareton seized it, saying Mr. Heathcliff should look at it first.
Catherine silently turned her face from us, and stealthily drew out her handkerchief and put it to her eyes. Her cousin, after struggling awhile to keep down his softer feelings, pulled out the letter and flung it on the floor beside her. Catherine caught and read it eagerly; then she asked me about the inmates of her former home; and murmured:
‘I should like to be riding down there! Oh! I’m tired – I’m stalled, Hareton!’ And she leant her pretty head against the sill, with half a yawn and half a sigh.
‘Mrs. Heathcliff,’ I said, ‘are you not aware that I am an acquaintance of yours? My housekeeper never wearies of talking about and praising you; and she’ll be greatly disappointed if I return with no news from you!’
She appeared to wonder at this speech, and asked, ‘Does Ellen like you?’
‘Yes, very well,’ I replied.
‘You must tell her that I would answer her letter, but I have nothing to write on: not even a book from which I might tear a leaf.’
‘No books!’ I exclaimed. ‘How do you contrive to live here without them? Without my books, I 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, except when I searched through Joseph’s store of theology, to his great irritation; and once, Hareton, I came upon a secret stock in your room – some Latin and Greek, and tales and poetry: all old friends that I brought here. You gathered them, as a magpie gathers silver spoons! They are of no use to you; or else you decided that, as you cannot enjoy them, nobody else shall. But I’ve most of them written on my brain and printed in my heart, and you cannot deprive me of those!’
Earnshaw blushed crimson, and stammered an indignant denial of her accusations.
‘Mr. Hareton wishes to increase his knowledge,’ I said, coming to his rescue. ‘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 read to himself, and pretty blunders he makes! I heard you reading Chevy Chase, Hareton: it was extremely funny. And I heard you turning over the dictionary to seek out the hard words, and then cursing because you couldn’t read their explanations!’
The young man evidently thought it too bad that he should be laughed at for his ignorance, and then laughed at for trying to remove it. I felt the same, and observed, ‘But, Mrs. Heathcliff, we have each had to begin learning, and each stumbled on the threshold; had our teachers scorned us, we should be stumbling still.’
‘Oh!’ she replied, ‘I don’t wish to stop him; but he has no right to take what is mine, and make it ridiculous to me with his vile mistakes! Those books have sacred memories for me; and I hate to have them debased in his mouth! Besides, he has selected my favourite pieces to repeat, as if out of malice.’
Hareton’s chest heaved in silence a minute: he laboured to suppress his mortification and anger. I rose, and to relieve his embarrassment, stood in the doorway, looking at the view. He left the room; but presently reappeared, carrying half a dozen volumes which he threw into Catherine’s lap, exclaiming,’ Take them! I never want to 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, and read a portion in the drawling tone of a beginner; then laughed, and threw it aside. ‘And listen,’ she continued provokingly, commencing a verse of an old ballad in the same fashion.
But his self-love would endure no further torment: I heard, and not altogether disapprovingly, a slap. The little wretch had done her utmost to hurt her cousin’s feelings, and a slap was the only reply he could make. He gathered the books and hurled them on the fire, with anguish in his face.
I guessed that he had been content with daily labour and rough enjoyments, till Catherine crossed his path. Hope of her approval had first prompted him to higher pursuits; but his endeavours had produced the contrary result.
‘Yes, that’s all a brute like you can do with them!’ cried Catherine.
‘You’d better hold your tongue,’ he answered fiercely, and he strode to the door. Mr. Heathcliff, coming up the path, laid hold of his shoulder and asked, ‘What’s to do now, my lad?’
‘Naught, naught,’ he said, and broke away to enjoy his grief and anger in solitude.
Heathcliff gazed after him, and sighed.
‘It will be odd if I thwart myself,’ he muttered, unaware that I was behind 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 see him.’
He walked moodily in. There was a restless, anxious expression in his face; and he looked thinner than before. His daughter-in-law immediately escaped to the kitchen, so that I was alone with him.
‘I’m glad to see you out of doors again, Mr. Lockwood,’ he said to me. ‘I’ve wondered more than once what brought you here to this desolation.’
‘An idle whim, I fear, sir,’ was my answer; ‘but I shall set out for London next week; and I must give you warning that I shall not keep Thrushcross Grange beyond the twelve months I agreed to. I believe I shall not live there any more.’
‘Oh, indeed; you’re tired of being banished from the world, are you?’ he said. ‘But if you’re coming to plead off paying your rent, your journey is useless.’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ I exclaimed, irritated. ‘I’ll settle with you now,’ and I drew my wallet from my pocket.
‘No, no,’ he replied, coolly; ‘I’m not in such a hurry. Sit down and take your dinner with us. Catherine! bring the things in.’
Catherine reappeared, bearing a tray of knives and forks.
‘Get your dinner with Joseph,’ muttered Heathcliff, ‘and stay in the kitchen till Mr. Lockwood is gone.’ She obeyed very punctually. Living among clowns and misanthropists, she probably cannot 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 cheerless meal, and said goodnight. I would have departed by the back way, to get a last glimpse of Catherine; but Hareton had orders to bring my horse, and my host himself escorted me to the door, so I could not fulfil my wish.
‘How dreary life gets in that house!’ I reflected, while riding down the road. ‘How romantic it would have been for Mrs. Linton Heathcl
iff, had she and I struck up an attachment, as her good nurse desired!’