Kitabı oxu: «Wuthering Heights»
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
History of Collins
Life & Times
VOLUME I
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
VOLUME II
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CLASSIC LITERATURE: WORDS AND PHRASES adapted from the Collins English Dictionary
Copyright
About the Publisher
History of Collins
In 1819, Millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.
Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner, however it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.
Aged 30, William’s son, William II took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopaedias and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.
In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.
HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.
Life & Times
The Brontë Family
Following in the footsteps of Jane Austen, The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, were the next generation of female writers. Unlike Austen, they were northerners, born and raised in West Yorkshire, England. There were also two other sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who sadly died young from tuberculosis, and a brother, Branwell, who became an artist and poet, fuelled by his opium and alcohol addiction.
Emily Brontë (1818–48) is lauded for her only novel Wuthering Heights (1847) – a complex Gothic tragedy, spanning two generations that expresses the mess people can make of their lives when needs and desires are allowed to control their actions and reactions, as opposed to common sense and restraint.
Charlotte Brontë (1816–55), the most well-known of the Brontë sisters, had three novels published in her lifetime, but it is for Jane Eyre (1847) that she is most celebrated. Anne Brontë (1820–49) is the lesser known of the sisters. She published two novels, Agnes Grey (1847) and the Tennant of Wildfell Hall (1848). Unlike her sisters, Anne’s style was one of realism rather than romanticism, making her the more contemporary writer at the time.
All three sisters used pen names, Ellis Bell, Currer Bell, and Acton Bell respectively, as it was quite usual at that time for female novelists to adopt male pseudonyms in an effort to be taken more seriously. Indeed, another well-known female author, George Eliot (1818–80), had the real name Mary Ann Evans. The reputation of the female novelist at the time was uncertain and it seems that Jane Austen herself may have prompted this practice.
The surname Brontë wasn’t wholly genuine either. Their father, Patrick, had originally been known as ‘Brunty’, a name he claimed, it is widely thought, for reasons of insecurity and vanity. An unusual name gave the illusion of continental sophistication and heritage, in much the same way that some people today settle on double-barrelled surnames to align themselves with the aristocracy.
Unfortunately for the Brontë sisters, they were all rather short-lived. Two years following the death of Charlotte, her friend and fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell published a biography of the elder Brontë. Gaskell’s biography created the impression of a family beset by misfortune, which was to all intents and purposes rather true, as their mother, Maria, had passed away in 1821 and even Branwell had died in 1848. Patrick outlived his entire family, dying at the impressive age of 84, in 1861.
Emily Brontë
It was her older sister, Charlotte, who recognised Emily’s talent for writing poetry and in 1846 the sisters published a collaborative poetry book under their pen-names. Although Emily attended school in 1824 and again for a short time in 1835, she was plagued by home-sickness and largely educated at home. That exposure to the lonely surrounding landscape of the Yorkshire moors at Haworth undoubtedly influenced her writing and in 1847 her first novel, Wuthering Heights was published. Intense, passionate and dark, it did not immediately garner the success or acclaim that Charlotte’s Jane Eyre achieved, however, it is now considered the great English Gothic novel. The story is so fragmented and powerful that at the time of publication, some sceptics thought that her brother, Branwell had written the book. This was based on the notion that women of that era were living closeted, circumscribed lives and therefore would never have been able to construct a story that contained the kind of passion, drama and characters that feature in Wuthering Heights.
Common Themes
Today, the novels of the Brontë sisters are as much a part of English literary history as the works of any other. There is a singularity about their collective way of viewing the world that speaks volumes about the relative isolation they experienced during their upbringing. Their father was a bookish and scholarly man who, by his very nature, was not given to worrying about the effects of solitude on his children. The result was that his children grew to be quite introverted, which was probably why they found company in each other and in their imaginations. It was considered highly unusual then, as it would be now, for three sisters to devote their lives to writing novels.
Like Jane Austen, before them, they existed on the fringes of polite society, where they could observe people and capture their personalities in prose, but were not necessarily thought of as eligible for marriage or inclusion in certain social circles. That marginalization, in itself, gave rise to frustrations, desires and needs that must have fuelled their creative drive. Their novels act as vehicles for self expression, alluding to their misgivings about life and providing them with strong voices for the plight of females in the 19th Century.
The Brontë Legacy
For the three sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, writing was clearly a way of living vicariously. Their social environment, their milieu, was such that they had rather limited experience of the outside world. Fragile health characterized the family, so that their mother and two other sisters had already died of illness by the time the three were teenagers. Their father was a teacher and clergyman, who kept a tight rein on his daughters and one son, for fear of losing them also. Tragically, he did lose them all before any had reached the age of forty, but not before his three daughters had tasted success as published novelists.
Their styles as novelists were quite individual, but there is a detectable thread of commonality in them, in the sense that the sisters were using prose as a means of communicating with the world beyond the sanctuary of home. They were well educated intellectuals, though with relatively little by way of fiscal wealth and somewhat reserved in nature. This made them well suited to writing, but unattractive as potential spouses for most eligible young men.
Charlotte and Emily used their novels to effectively live other lives, and they are often described as romanticists as a result. Anne did the same, but in a less imaginative frame, so that her scenarios were not too far removed from reality. The year 1847 was the most eventful period of time for the Brontë sisters, as it saw all three of their aforementioned novels published – Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey.
The fictitious character Jane Eyre, of the eponymous novel, could easily be translated as Charlotte imagining herself in a scenario where she comes from a background far worse than her own, but ends up living a life that is more rounded and fulfilled than the one she leads, reinventing herself in prose.
Emily goes even further than Charlotte with Wuthering Heights. She imagines different versions of herself living through an epic story of tragedy. She must have longed for more adventure and excitement in her life, and therefore acted it out in the theatre of her imagination.
In Anne’s Agnes Grey there is obvious overlap between Anne and Agnes, so that a blend of fact and fiction is evident. Ann was more concerned with using her prose to express the real trials and tribulations of her life as a governess, as opposed to using them as a form of escapism, like her sisters.
In a way the cumulative result of the Brontë’s work is to demonstrate three depths to which fictional prose can be used as a form of self expression. All three sisters transposed themselves into their imagined worlds, but to differing extremes from Anne to Charlotte to Emily. This might be interpreted as an indication of their different personality types, but as they all lived very short lives it is impossible to know how their individual preferences might have adapted and matured over time.
The social impact and legacy of the Brontës work was that it dared to be truthful and self indulgent in an age when polite society was rather reserved and reticent about emotions and desires. While Jane Austen’s work had described the lives of people somewhat removed from an environment most people would consider familiar, the Brontës described the lives of people who were more human, in that they were not nearly so bound by rules of etiquette and prescribed ways of behaving. It wasn’t necessary to read between the lines to understand the allegory, because the Brontës wrote from the heart in an exposing and honest way that was so new that it heightened people’s idea of the very purpose of literature as an art form.
VOLUME I
CHAPTER 1
1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist’s Heaven – and Mr Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name.
‘Mr Heathcliff?’ I said.
A nod was the answer.
‘Mr Lockwood, your new tenant, sir – I do myself the honour of calling as soon as possible, after my arrival, to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by my perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange: I heard, yesterday, you had had some thoughts –’
‘Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir,’ he interrupted, wincing, ‘I should not allow any one to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it – walk in!’
The ‘walk in’ was uttered with closed teeth and expressed the sentiment, ‘Go to the Deuce!’ Even the gate over which he leant manifested no sympathizing movement to the words; and I think that circumstance determined me to accept the invitation: I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself.
When he saw my horse’s breast fairly pushing the barrier, he did pull out his hand to unchain it, and then sullenly preceded me up the causeway, calling, as we entered the court:
‘Joseph, take Mr Lockwood’s horse; and bring up some wine.’
‘Here we have the whole establishment of domestics, I suppose,’ was the reflection, suggested by this compound order. ‘No wonder the grass grows up between the flags, and cattle are the only hedgecutters.’
Joseph was an elderly, nay, an old man, very old, perhaps, though hale and sinewy.
‘The Lord help us!’ he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse: looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no reference to my unexpected advent.
Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr Heathcliff’s dwelling, ‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there, at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few, stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones.
Before passing the threshold, I paused to admire a quantity of grotesque carving lavished over the front, and especially about the principal door, above which, among a wilderness of crumbling griffins, and shameless little boys, I detected the date ‘1500,’ and the name ‘Hareton Earnshaw.’ I would have made a few comments, and requested a short history of the place from the surly owner, but his attitude at the door appeared to demand my speedy entrance, or complete departure, and I had no desire to aggravate his impatience, previous to inspecting the penetralium.
One step brought us into the family sitting-room, without any introductory lobby, or passage: they call it here ‘the house’ preeminently. It includes kitchen and parlor, generally, but I believe at Wuthering Heights the kitchen is forced to retreat altogether into another quarter, at least I distinguished a chatter of tongues, and a clatter of culinary utensils, deep within; and I observed no signs of roasting, boiling, or baking, about the huge fire-place; nor any glitter of copper saucepans and tin cullenders on the walls. One end, indeed, reflected splendidly both light and heat from ranks of immense pewter dishes, interspersed with silver jugs and tankards, towering row after row, in a vast oak dresser, to the very roof. The latter had never been underdrawn; its entire anatomy lay bare to an inquiring eye, except where a frame of wood laden with oatcakes, and clusters of legs of beef, mutton and ham, concealed it. Above the chimney were sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols, and, by way of ornament, three gaudily painted canisters disposed along its ledge. The floor was of smooth, white stone: the chairs, high-backed, primitive structures, painted green: one or two heavy black ones lurking in the shade. In an arch, under the dresser, reposed a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies, and other dogs haunted other recesses.
The apartment and furniture would have been nothing extraordinary as belonging to a homely, northern farmer with a stubborn countenance, and stalwart limbs set out to advantage in kneebreeches and gaiters. Such an individual, seated in his armchair, his mug of ale frothing on the round table before him, is to be seen in any circuit of five or six miles among these hills, if you go at the right time, after dinner. But, Mr Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman – that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss, with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure – and rather morose – possibly some people might suspect him of a degree of under-bred pride – I have a sympathetic chord within that tells me it is nothing of the sort; I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling – to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He’ll love and hate, equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again – No, I’m running on too fast – I bestow my own attributes over-liberally on him. Mr Heathcliff may have entirely dissimilar reasons for keeping his hand out of the way, when he meets a would-be acquaintance, to those which actuate me. Let me hope my constitution is almost peculiar: my dear mother used to say I should never have a comfortable home, and only last summer, I proved myself perfectly unworthy of one.
While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature, a real goddess, in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I ‘never told my love’ vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me, at last, and looked a return – the sweetest of all imaginable looks – and what did I do? I confess it with shame – shrunk icily into myself, like a snail, at every glance retired colder and farther; till; finally, the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp.
By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness, how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.
I took a seat at the end of the hearthstone opposite that towards which my landlord advanced, and filled up an interval of silence by attempting to caress the canine mother, who had left her nursery, and was sneaking wolfishly to the back of my legs, her lip curled up, and her white teeth watering for a snatch.
My caress provoked a long, guttural snarl.
‘You’d better let the dog alone,’ growled Mr Heathcliff, in unison, checking fiercer demonstrations with a punch of his foot. ‘She’s not accustomed to be spoiled – not kept for a pet.’
Then, striding to a side-door, he shouted again.
‘Joseph!’
Joseph mumbled indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, but gave no intimation of ascending; so, his master dived down to him, leaving me vis-à-vis the ruffianly bitch, and a pair of grim, shaggy sheep dogs, who shared with her a jealous guardianship over all my movements.
Not anxious to come in contact with their fangs, I sat still – but, imagining they would scarcely understand tacit insults, I unfortunately indulged in winking and making faces at the trio, and some turn of my physiognomy so irritated madam, that she suddenly broke into a fury, and leapt on my knees. I flung her back, and hastened to interpose the table between us. This proceeding roused the whole hive. Half-a-dozen four-footed fiends, of various sizes, and ages, issued from hidden dens to the common centre. I felt my heels and coat-laps peculiar subjects of assault; and, parrying off the larger combatants, as effectually as I could, with the poker, I was constrained to demand, aloud, assistance from some of the household in re-establishing peace.
Mr Heathcliff and his man climbed the cellar steps with vexatious phlegm. I don’t think they moved one second faster than usual, though the hearth was an absolute tempest of worrying and yelping.
Happily, an inhabitant of the kitchen made more dispatch; a lusty dame, with tucked-up gown, bare arms, and fire-flushed cheeks, rushed into the midst of us flourishing a frying-pan; and used that weapon, and her tongue, to such purpose, that the storm subsided magically, and she only remained, heaving like a sea after a high wind, when her master entered on the scene.
‘What the devil is the matter?’ he asked, eyeing me in a manner that I could ill endure after this inhospitable treatment.
‘What the devil, indeed!’ I muttered. ‘The herd of possessed swine could have had no worse spirits in them than those animals of yours, sir. You might as well leave a stranger with a brood of tigers!’
‘They won’t meddle with persons who touch nothing,’ he remarked, putting the bottle before me, and restoring the displaced table. ‘The dogs do right to be vigilant. Take a glass of wine?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Not bitten, are you?’
‘If I had been, I would have set my signet on the biter.’
Heathcliff’s countenance relaxed into a grin.
‘Come, come,’ he said, ‘you are flurried, Mr Lockwood. Here, take a little wine. Guests are so exceedingly rare in this house that I and my dogs, I am willing to own, hardly know how to receive them. Your health, sir!’
I bowed and returned the pledge, beginning to perceive that it would be foolish to sit sulking for the misbehaviour of a pack of curs: besides, I felt loath to yield the fellow further amusement, at my expense; since his humour took that turn.
He – probably swayed by prudential considerations of the folly of offending a good tenant – relaxed, a little, in the laconic style of chipping off his pronouns, and auxiliary verbs; and introduced, what he supposed would be a subject of interest to me, a discourse on the advantages and disadvantages of my present place of retirement.
I found him very intelligent on the topics we touched; and, before I went home, I was encouraged so far as to volunteer another visit, tomorrow.
He evidently wished no repetition of my intrusion. I shall go, notwithstanding. It is astonishing how sociable I feel myself compared with him.
CHAPTER 2
Yesterday afternoon set in misty and cold. I had half a mind to spend it by my study fire, instead of wading through heath and mud to Wuthering Heights.
On coming up from dinner, however, (N.B. I dine between twelve and one o’clock; the housekeeper, a matronly lady taken as a fixture along with the house, could not, or would not comprehend my request that I might be served at five), on mounting the stairs with this lazy intention, and stepping into the room, I saw a servant-girl on her knees, surrounded by brushes and coalscuttles, and raising an infernal dust as she extinguished the flames with heaps of cinders. This spectacle drove me back immediately; I took my hat, and, after a four miles’ walk, arrived at Heathcliff’s garden gate just in time to escape the first feathery flakes of a snow shower.
On that bleak hill top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. Being unable to remove the chain, I jumped over, and, running up the flagged causeway bordered with straggling gooseberry bushes, knocked vainly for admittance, till my knuckles tingled, and the dogs howled.
‘Wretched inmates!’ I ejaculated, mentally, ‘you deserve perpetual isolation from your species for your churlish inhospitality. At least, I would not keep my doors barred in the day time – I don’t care – I will get in!’
So resolved, I grasped the latch, and shook it vehemently. Vinegar-faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn.
‘Whet are ye for?’ he shouted. ‘T’ maister’s dahn i’ t’fowld. Goa rahnd by th’ end ut’ laith, if yah went tuh spake tull him.’
‘Is there nobody inside to open the door?’ I hallooed, responsively.
‘They’s nobbut t’ missis; and shoo’ll nut oppen’t an ye mak yer flaysome dins till neeght.’
‘Why? cannot you tell her who I am, eh, Joseph?’
‘Nor-ne me! Aw’ll hae noa hend wi’t,’ muttered the head, vanishing.
The snow began to drive thickly. I seized the handle to essay another trial; when a young man, without coat, and shouldering a pitchfork, appeared in the yard behind. He hailed me to follow him, and, after marching through a wash-house, and a paved area containing a coal-shed, pump, and pigeon cote, we at length arrived in the large, warm, cheerful apartment, where I was formerly received.
It glowed delightfully in the radiance of an immense fire, compounded of coal, peat, and wood: and near the table, laid for a plentiful evening meal, I was pleased to observe the ‘missis,’ an individual whose existence I had never previously suspected.
I bowed and waited, thinking she would bid me take a seat. She looked at me, leaning back in her chair, and remained motionless and mute.
‘Rough weather!’ I remarked. ‘I’m afraid, Mrs Heathcliff, the door must bear the consequence of your servants’ leisure attendance: I had hard work to make them hear me!’
She never opened her mouth. I stared – she stared also. At any rate, she kept her eyes on me, in a cool, regardless manner, exceedingly embarrassing and disagreeable.
‘Sit down,’ said the young man, gruffly. ‘He’ll be in soon.’
I obeyed; and hemmed, and called the villain Juno, who deigned, at this second interview, to move the extreme tip of her tail, in token of owning my acquaintance.
‘A beautiful animal!’ I commenced again. ‘Do you intend parting with the little ones, madam?’
‘They are not mine,’ said the amiable hostess more repellingly than Heathcliff himself could have replied.
‘Ah, your favourites are among these!’ I continued, turning to an obscure cushion full of something like cats.
‘A strange choice of favourites,’ she observed scornfully.
Unluckily, it was a heap of dead rabbits – I hemmed once more, and drew closer to the hearth, repeating my comment on the wildness of the evening.
‘You should not have come out,’ she said, rising and reaching from the chimney-piece two of the painted canisters.
Her position before was sheltered from the light: now, I had a distinct view of her whole figure and countenance. She was slender, and apparently scarcely past girlhood: an admirable form, and the most exquisite little face that I have ever had the pleasure of beholding: small features, very fair; flaxen ringlets, or rather golden, hanging loose on her delicate neck; and eyes – had they been agreeable in expression, they would have been irresistible – fortunately for my susceptible heart, the only sentiment they evinced hovered between scorn and a kind of desperation, singularly unnatural to be detected there.
The canisters were almost out of her reach; I made a motion to aid her; she turned upon me as a miser might turn, if any one attempted to assist him in counting his gold.
‘I don’t want your help,’ she snapped, ‘I can get them for myself.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ I hastened to reply.
‘Were you asked to tea?’ she demanded, tying an apron over her neat black frock, and standing with a spoonful of the leaf poised over the pot.
‘I shall be glad to have a cup,’ I answered.
‘Were you asked?’ she repeated.
‘No,’ I said, half smiling. ‘You are the proper person to ask me.’
She flung the tea back, spoon and all; and resumed her chair in a pet, her forehead corrugated, and her red under-lip pushed out, like a child’s ready to cry.
Meanwhile, the young man had slung onto his person a decidedly shabby upper garment, and, erecting himself before the blaze, looked down on me, from the corner of his eyes, for all the world as if there were some mortal feud unavenged between us. I began to doubt whether he were a servant or not; his dress and speech were both rude, entirely devoid of the superiority observable in Mr and Mrs Heathcliff; his thick, brown curls were rough and uncultivated, his whiskers encroached bearishly over his cheeks, and his hands were embrowned like those of a common labourer: still his bearing was free, almost haughty, and he showed none of a domestic’s assiduity in attending on the lady of the house.
In the absence of clear proofs of his condition, I deemed it best to abstain from noticing his curious conduct, and, five minutes afterwards, the entrance of Heathcliff relieved me, in some measure, from my uncomfortable state.
‘You see, sir, I am come according to promise!’ I exclaimed, assuming the cheerful; ‘and I fear I shall be weather-bound for half an hour, if you can afford me shelter during that space.’
‘Half an hour?’ he said, shaking the white flakes from his clothes; ‘I wonder you should select the thick of a snowstorm to ramble about in. Do you know that you run a risk of being lost in the marshes? People familiar with these moors often miss their road on such evenings, and, I can tell you, there is no chance of a change at present.’
‘Perhaps I can get a guide among your lads, and he might stay at the Grange till morning – could you spare me one?’
‘No, I could not.’
‘Oh, indeed! Well then, I must trust to my own sagacity.’
‘Umph!’
‘Are you going to mak th’ tea?’ demanded he of the shabby coat, shifting his ferocious gaze from me to the young lady.
‘Is he to have any?’ she asked, appealing to Heathcliff.
‘Get it ready, will you?’ was the answer, uttered so savagely that I started. The tone in which the words were said revealed a genuine bad nature. I no longer felt inclined to call Heathcliff a capital fellow.
When the preparations were finished, he invited me with –
‘Now, sir, bring forward your chair.’ And we all, including the rustic youth, drew round the table, an austere silence prevailing while we discussed our meal.
I thought, if I had caused the cloud, it was my duty to make an effort to dispel it. They could not every day sit so grim and taciturn, and it was impossible, however ill-tempered they might be, that the universal scowl they wore was their everyday countenance.
‘It is strange,’ I began, in the interval of swallowing one cup of tea and receiving another, ‘it is strange how custom can mould our tastes and ideas; many could not imagine the existence of happiness in a life of such complete exile from the world as you spend, Mr Heathcliff; yet, I’ll venture to say, that, surrounded by your family, and with your amiable lady as the presiding genius over your home and heart –’
‘My amiable lady!’ he interrupted, with an almost diabolical sneer on his face. ‘Where is she – my amiable lady?’
‘Mrs Heathcliff, your wife, I mean.’
‘Well, yes – Oh! you would intimate that her spirit has taken the post of ministering angel, and guards the fortunes of Wuthering Heights, even when her body is gone. Is that it?’
Perceiving myself in a blunder, I attempted to correct it. I might have seen there was too great a disparity between the ages of the parties to make it likely that they were man and wife. One was about forty; a period of mental vigour at which men seldom cherish the delusion of being married for love, by girls: that dream is reserved for the solace of our declining years. The other did not look seventeen.
Then it flashed upon me – ‘The clown at my elbow, who is drinking his tea out of a basin, and eating his bread with unwashed hands, may be her husband. Heathcliff, junior, of course. Here is the consequence of being buried alive: she has thrown herself away upon that boor, from sheer ignorance that better individuals existed! A sad pity – I must beware how I cause her to regret her choice.’
The last reflection may seem conceited; it was not. My neighbour struck me as bordering on repulsive. I knew, through experience, that I was tolerably attractive.
‘Mrs Heathcliff is my daughter-in-law,’ said Heathcliff, corroborating my surmise. He turned, as he spoke, a peculiar look in her direction, a look of hatred unless he has a most perverse set of facial muscles that will not, like those of other people, interpret the language of his soul.
‘Ah, certainly – I see now; you are the favoured possessor of the beneficent fairy,’ I remarked, turning to my neighbour.
This was worse than before: the youth grew crimson, and clenched his fist with every appearance of a meditated assault. But he seemed to recollect himself, presently; and smothered the storm in a brutal curse, muttered on my behalf, which, however, I took care not to notice.
‘Unhappy in your conjectures, sir!’ observed my host; ‘we neither of us have the privilege of owning your good fairy; her mate is dead. I said she was my daughter-in-law, therefore, she must have married my son.’
‘And this young man is –’
‘Not my son, assuredly!’
Heathcliff smiled again, as if it were rather too bold a jest to attribute the paternity of that bear to him.
‘My name is Hareton Earnshaw,’ growled the other; ‘and I’d counsel you to respect it!’
‘I’ve shown no disrespect,’ was my reply, laughing internally at the dignity with which he announced himself.
He fixed his eye on me longer than I cared to return the stare, for fear I might be tempted either to box his ears, or render my hilarity audible. I began to feel unmistakably out of place in that pleasant family circle. The dismal spiritual atmosphere overcame, and more than neutralized the glowing physical comforts round me; and I resolved to be cautious how I ventured under those rafters a third time.
The business of eating being concluded, and no one uttering a word of sociable conversation, I approached a window to examine the weather.
A sorrowful sight I saw; dark night coming down prematurely, and sky and hills mingled in one bitter whirl of wind and suffocating snow.
‘I don’t think it possible for me to get home now, without a guide,’ I could not help exclaiming. ‘The roads will be buried already; and, if they were bare, I could scarcely distinguish a foot in advance.’
‘Hareton, drive those dozen sheep into the barn porch. They’ll be covered if left in the fold all night; and put a plank before them,’ said Heathcliff.
‘How must I do?’ I continued, with rising irritation.
There was no reply to my question; and, on looking round, I saw only Joseph bringing in a pail of porridge for the dogs, and Mrs Heathcliff leaning over the fire, diverting herself with burning a bundle of matches which had fallen from the chimney-piece as she restored the tea-canister to its place.
The former, when he had deposited his burden, took a critical survey of the room; and, in cracked tones, grated out:
‘Aw woonder hagh yah can faishion tuh stand thear i’ idleness un war, when all on ‘em’s goan aght! Bud yah’re a nowt, and it’s noa use talking – yah’ll niver mend uh yer ill ways; bud goa raight tuh t’ divil, like yer mother afore ye!’
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 visiters; 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 aid 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’lantern!’ 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 cope-stone 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 3
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 stupified 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 decypher 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 down stairs before a comfortable fire – doing anything but reading their Bibles, I’ll answer for it – Heathcliff, myself, and the unhappy plough-boy, 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 handywork, boxes my ears, and croaks:
‘“T’ maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath nut o’ered, und t’ sahnd uh t’ gospel still i’ yer lugs, and yah darr be laiking! shame on ye! sit ye dahn, ill childer! they’s good books eneugh if ye’ll read ‘em; sit ye dahn, and think uh 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 uh Salvation,’ un’ Heathcliff’s pawsed his fit intuh t’ first part uh ‘T’ Brooad Way to Destruction!’ It’s fair flaysome ut yah let ‘em goa on this gait. Ech! th’ owd man ud uh laced ‘em properly – bud 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 dairy woman’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 Jabes Branderham, in the Chapel of Gimmerden Sough.’ And while I was, half consciously, worrying my brain to guess what Jabes 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 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 Jabes 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, Jabes 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 grew. 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 Jabes 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!’
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.
