and pouring forth a deluge of abuse, because I represented your failings in a plain light, for the purpose of mitigating her adoration. But don’t notice it further: I wished to punish her sauciness, that’s all. I like her too well, my dear Heathcliff, to let you absolutely seize and devour her up.”
“And I like her too ill to attempt it,” said he, “except in a very ghoulish fashion. You’d hear of odd things if I lived alone with that mawkish, waxen face: the most ordinary would be painting on its white the colours of the rainbow, and turning the blue eyes black, every day or two: they detestably resemble Linton’s.”
“Delectably!” observed Catherine. “They are dove’s eyes—angel’s!”
“She’s her brother’s heir, is she not?” he asked, after a brief silence.
“I should be sorry to think so,” returned his companion. “Half-a-dozen nephews shall erase her title, please Heaven! Abstract your mind from the subject at present: you are too prone to covet your neighbour’s goods; remember this neighbour’s goods are mine.”
“If they were mine, they would be none the less that,” said Heathcliff; “but though Isabella Linton may be silly, she is scarcely mad; and, in short, we’ll dismiss the matter, as you advise.”
From their tongues they did dismiss it; and Catherine, probably, from her thoughts. The other, I felt certain, recalled it often in the course of the evening. I saw him smile to himself—grin rather—and lapse into ominous musing whenever Mrs. Linton had occasion to be absent from the apartment.
I determined to watch his movements. My heart invariably cleaved to the master’s, in preference to Catherine’s side: with reason I imagined, for he was kind, and trustful, and honourable; and she—she could not be called the opposite, yet she seemed to allow herself such wide latitude, that I had little faith in her principles, and still less sympathy for her feelings. I wanted something to happen which might have the effect of freeing both Wuthering Heights and the Grange of Mr. Heathcliff, leaving us as we had been prior to his advent. His visits were a continual nightmare to me; and, I suspected, to my master also. His abode at the Heights was an oppression past explaining. I felt that God had forsaken the stray sheep there to its own wicked wanderings, and an evil beast prowled between it and the fold, waiting his time to spring and destroy.
Chapter 11
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SOMETIMES, while meditating on these things in solitude, I’ve got up in a sudden terror, and put on my bonnet to go see how all was at the farm. I’ve persuaded my conscience that it was a duty to warn him how people talked regarding his ways; and then I’ve recollected his confirmed bad habits, and, hopeless of benefiting him, have flinched from re-entering the dismal house, doubting if I could bear to be taken at my word.
One time I passed the old gate, going out of my way, on a journey to Gimmerton. It was about the period that my narrative has reached: a bright frosty afternoon; the ground bare, and the road hard and dry. I came to a stone where the highway branches off on to the moor at your left hand; a rough sand-pillar, with the letters W H. cut on its north side, on the east, G., and on the south-west, T. G. It serves as a guide post to the Grange, the Heights, and village. The sun shone yellow on its grey head, reminding me of summer; and I cannot say why, but all at once, a gush of child’s sensations flowed into my heart. Hindley and I held it a favourite spot twenty years before. I gazed long at the weather-worn block, and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles, which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things; and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf: his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate. “Poor Hindley!” I exclaimed involuntarily. I started: my bodily eye was cheated into a momentary belief that the child lifted its face and stared straight into mine! It vanished in a twinkling; but immediately I felt an irresistible yearning to be at the Heights. Superstition urged me to comply with this impulse: supposing he should be dead! I thought—or should die soon!—supposing it were a sign of death! The nearer I got to the house the more agitated I grew; and on catching sight of it I trembled in every limb. The apparition had outstripped me: it stood looking through the gate. That was my first idea on observing an elf-locked, brown-eyed boy setting his ruddy countenance against the bars. Further reflection suggested this must be Hareton, my Hareton, not altered greatly since I left him, ten months since.
“God bless thee, darling!” I cried, forgetting instantaneously my foolish fears. “Hareton, it’s Nelly! Nelly, thy nurse.”
He retreated out of arm’s length, and picked up a large flint.
“I am come to see thy father, Hareton,” I added guessing from the action that Nelly, if she lived in his memory at all, was not recognized as one with me.
He raised his missile to hurl it; I commenced a soothing speech, but could not stay his hand: the stone struck my bonnet; and then ensued, from the stammering lips of the little fellow, a string of curses, which, whether he comprehended them or not, were delivered with practised emphasis, and distorted his baby features into a shocking expression of malignity. You may be certain this grieved more than angered me. Fit to cry, I took an orange from my pocket, and offered it to propitiate him. He hesitated, and then snatched it from my hold; as if he fancied I only intended to tempt and disappoint him. I showed him another, keeping it out of his reach.
“Who has taught you those fine words, my bairn?” I enquired. “The curate?”
“Damn the curate, and thee! Gie me that,” he replied.
“Tell us where you got your lessons, and you shall have it,” said I. “Who’s your master?”
“Devil daddy,” was his answer.
“And what do you learn from daddy?” I continued.
He jumped at the fruit; I raised it higher. “What does he teach you?” I asked.
“Naught,” said he, “but to keep out of his gait. Daddy cannot bide me, because I swear at him.”
“Ah! and the devil teaches you to swear at daddy?” I observed.
“Ah—nay,” he drawled.
“Who then?”
“Heathcliff.”
I asked if he liked Mr. Heathcliff.
“Ay!” he answered again.
Desiring to have his reasons for liking him, I could only gather the sentences —“I known’t: he pays dad back what he gies to me—he curses daddy for cursing me. He says I mun do as I will.”
“And the curate does not teach you to read and write then?” I pursued.
“No, I was told the curate should have his—teeth dashed down his—throat, if he stepped over the threshold—Heathcliff had promised that!”
I put the orange in his hand, and bade him tell his father that a woman called Nelly Dean was waiting to speak with him, by the garden gate. He went up the walk, and entered the house; but, instead of Hindley, Heathcliff appeared on the door stones; and I turned directly and ran down
