Chapter Chapter 31 · 第31章

Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty. I went to the Heights as I

proposed: my housekeeper entreated me to bear a little note from her to

her young lady, and I did not refuse, for the worthy woman was not

conscious of anything odd in her request. The front door stood open,

but the jealous gate was fastened, as at my last visit; I knocked and

invoked Earnshaw from among the garden-beds; he unchained it, and I

entered. The fellow is as handsome a rustic as need be seen. I took

particular notice of him this time; but then he does his best

apparently to make the least 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 my

intention of going in and waiting for him; at which he immediately

flung down his tools and accompanied me, in the office of watchdog, not

as a substitute for the host.

We entered together; Catherine was there, making herself useful in

preparing some vegetables for the approaching meal; she looked more

sulky and less spirited than when I had seen her first. She hardly

raised her eyes to notice me, and continued her employment with the

same disregard to common forms of politeness as before; never returning

my bow and good-morning by the slightest acknowledgment.

“She does not seem so amiable,” I thought, “as Mrs. Dean would persuade

me to believe. She’s a beauty, it is true; but not an angel.”

Earnshaw surlily bid her remove her things to the kitchen. “Remove them

yourself,” she said, pushing them from her as soon as she had done; and

retiring 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, pretending to desire a view of the garden; 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 your old acquaintance, the housekeeper at the Grange,” I

answered; annoyed at her exposing my kind deed, and fearful lest it

should be imagined a missive of my own. She would gladly have gathered

it up at this information, but Hareton beat her; he seized and put it

in his waistcoat, saying Mr. Heathcliff should look at it first.

Thereat, Catherine silently turned her face from us, and, very

stealthily, drew out her pocket-handkerchief and applied it to her

eyes; and her cousin, after struggling awhile to keep down his softer

feelings, pulled out the letter 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 to me 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 be

climbing up there! Oh! I’m tired—I’m _stalled_, Hareton!” And she leant

her pretty head back against the sill, with half a yawn and half a

sigh, and lapsed into an aspect of abstracted sadness: neither caring

nor knowing whether we remarked her.

“Mrs. Heathcliff,” I said, after sitting some time mute, “you are not

aware that I am an acquaintance of yours? so intimate that I think it

strange you won’t come and speak to me. My housekeeper never wearies of

talking about and praising you; and she’ll be greatly disappointed if I

return with no news of or from you, except that you received her letter

and 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,

but I have no materials for writing: not even a book from which I might

tear a 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

large library, I’m frequently very dull at the Grange; take my books

away, and 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. Only once, 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 some tales and poetry: all old friends. I brought the last here—and

you gathered them, as a magpie gathers silver spoons, for the mere love

of stealing! They are of no use to you; or else you concealed them in

the bad spirit that, as you cannot enjoy them, nobody else shall.

Perhaps _your_ envy counselled Mr. Heathcliff to rob me of my

treasures? 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 when his cousin made this revelation of his

private literary accumulations, and stammered an indignant denial of

her accusations.

“Mr. Hareton is desirous of increasing his amount of knowledge,” I

said, coming to his rescue. “He is not _envious_, but _emulous_ of your

attainments. 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

blunders he makes! I wish you would repeat Chevy Chase as you did

yesterday: it was extremely funny. I heard you; 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 had a

similar notion; and, remembering Mrs. Dean’s anecdote of his first

attempt at enlightening the darkness in which he had been reared, I

observed,—“But, Mrs. Heathcliff, we have each had a commencement, and

each stumbled and tottered on the threshold; had our teachers scorned

instead of aiding us, we should stumble and totter yet.”

“Oh!” she replied, “I don’t wish to limit his acquirements: still, he

has no right to appropriate what is mine, and make it ridiculous to me

with his vile mistakes and mispronunciations! Those books, both prose

and verse, are consecrated to me by other associations; and I hate to

have them debased and profaned in his mouth! Besides, of all, he has

selected my favourite pieces that I love the most to repeat, as if out

of deliberate malice.”

Hareton’s chest heaved in silence a minute: he laboured under a severe

sense of mortification and wrath, which it was no easy task to

suppress. I rose, and, from a gentlemanly idea of relieving his

embarrassment, took up 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 into Catherine’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 a

portion in the drawling tone of a beginner; then laughed, and threw it

from her. “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 manual check given to her saucy tongue.

The little wretch had done her utmost to hurt her cousin’s sensitive

though uncultivated feelings, and a physical argument was the only mode

he had of balancing the account, and repaying its effects on the

inflictor. He afterwards gathered the books and hurled them on the

fire. I read in his countenance what anguish it was to offer that

sacrifice to spleen. I fancied that as they consumed, he recalled the

pleasure they had already imparted, and the triumph and ever-increasing

pleasure he had anticipated from them; and I fancied I guessed the

incitement to his secret studies also. He had been content with daily

labour and rough animal enjoyments, till Catherine crossed his path.

Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompters

to higher pursuits; and instead of guarding him from one and winning

him to the other, his endeavours to raise 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

conflagration with indignant eyes.

“You’d _better_ hold your tongue, now,” he answered fiercely.

And his agitation precluded further speech; he advanced hastily to the

entrance, where I made way for him to pass. But ere he had crossed the

door-stones, Mr. Heathcliff, coming up the causeway, encountered him,

and laying 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

in solitude.

Heathcliff gazed after him, and sighed.

“It will be odd if I thwart myself,” he muttered, unconscious 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 bent his eyes to the ground, and walked moodily in. There was a

restless, anxious expression in his countenance, I had never remarked

there before; and he looked sparer in person. His daughter-in-law, on

perceiving him through the window, immediately escaped to the kitchen,

so that I remained alone.

“I’m glad to see you out of doors again, Mr. Lockwood,” he said, in

reply to my greeting; “from selfish motives partly: I don’t think I

could readily supply your loss in this desolation. I’ve wondered more

than once what brought you here.”

“An idle whim, I fear, sir,” was my answer; “or else an idle whim is

going to spirit me away. I shall set out for London next week; and I

must give you warning that I feel no disposition to retain Thrushcross

Grange beyond the twelve months I agreed to rent it. 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 be coming to plead off paying for a place you

won’t occupy, your journey is useless: I never relent in exacting my

due from any one.”

“I’m coming to plead off nothing about it,” I exclaimed, considerably

irritated. “Should you wish it, I’ll settle with you now,” and I drew

my note-book from my pocket.

“No, no,” he replied, coolly; “you’ll leave sufficient behind to cover

your debts, if you fail to return: I’m not in such a hurry. Sit down

and take your dinner with us; a guest that is safe from repeating his

visit can generally be made welcome. Catherine! bring the things in:

where are you?”

Catherine reappeared, bearing a tray of knives and forks.

“You may get your dinner with Joseph,” muttered Heathcliff, aside, “and

remain in the kitchen till he is gone.”

She obeyed his directions very punctually: perhaps she had no

temptation to transgress. 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 somewhat cheerless meal, and

bade adieu early. I would have departed by the back way, to get a last

glimpse of Catherine and annoy old Joseph; but Hareton received orders

to lead up my horse, and my host himself escorted me to the door, so I

could not fulfil my wish.

“How dreary life gets over in that house!” I reflected, while riding

down the road. “What a realisation of something more romantic than a

fairy tale it would have been for Mrs. Linton Heathcliff, had she and I

struck up an attachment, as her good nurse desired, and migrated

together into the stirring atmosphere of the town!”