第 三十四 章 · 第34章
For some days after that evening, Mr. Heathcliff shunned meeting us at
meals; yet he would not consent formally to exclude Hareton and Cathy.
He had an aversion to yielding so completely to his feelings, choosing
rather to absent himself; and eating once in twenty-four hours seemed
sufficient sustenance for him.
One night, after the family were in bed, I heard him go downstairs, and
out at the front door. I did not hear him re-enter, and in the morning
I found he was still away. We were in April then: the weather was sweet
and warm, the grass as green as showers and sun could make it, and the
two dwarf apple-trees near the southern wall in full bloom. After
breakfast, Catherine insisted on my bringing a chair and sitting with
my work under the fir-trees at the end of the house; and she beguiled
Hareton, who had perfectly recovered from his accident, to dig and
arrange her little garden, which was shifted to that corner by the
influence of Joseph’s complaints. I was comfortably revelling in the
spring fragrance around, and the beautiful soft blue overhead, when my
young lady, who had run down near the gate to procure some primrose
roots for a border, returned only half laden, and informed us that Mr.
Heathcliff was coming in. “And he spoke to me,” she added, with a
perplexed countenance.
“What did he say?” asked Hareton.
“He told me to begone as fast as I could,” she answered. “But he looked
so different from his usual look that I stopped a moment to stare at
him.”
“How?” he inquired.
“Why, almost bright and cheerful. No, _almost_ nothing—_very much_
excited, and wild, and glad!” she replied.
“Night-walking amuses him, then,” I remarked, affecting a careless
manner: in reality as surprised as she was, and anxious to ascertain
the truth of her statement; for to see the master looking glad would
not be an every-day spectacle. I framed an excuse to go in. Heathcliff
stood at the open door; he was pale, and he trembled: yet, certainly,
he had a strange joyful glitter in his eyes, that altered the aspect of
his whole face.
“Will you have some breakfast?” I said. “You must be hungry, rambling
about all night!” I wanted to discover where he had been, but I did not
like to ask directly.
“No, I’m not hungry,” he answered, averting his head, and speaking
rather contemptuously, as if he guessed I was trying to divine the
occasion of his good humour.
I felt perplexed: I didn’t know whether it were not a proper
opportunity to offer a bit of admonition.
“I don’t think it right to wander out of doors,” I observed, “instead
of being in bed: it is not wise, at any rate this moist season. I
daresay you’ll catch a bad cold, or a fever: you have something the
matter with you now!”
“Nothing but what I can bear,” he replied; “and with the greatest
pleasure, provided you’ll leave me alone: get in, and don’t annoy me.”
I obeyed: and, in passing, I noticed he breathed as fast as a cat.
“Yes!” I reflected to myself, “we shall have a fit of illness. I cannot
conceive what he has been doing.”
That noon he sat down to dinner with us, and received a heaped-up plate
from my hands, as if he intended to make amends for previous fasting.
“I’ve neither cold nor fever, Nelly,” he remarked, in allusion to my
morning’s speech; “and I’m ready to do justice to the food you give
me.”
He took his knife and fork, and was going to commence eating, when the
inclination appeared to become suddenly extinct. He laid them on the
table, looked eagerly towards the window, then rose and went out. We
saw him walking to and fro in the garden while we concluded our meal,
and Earnshaw said he’d go and ask why he would not dine: he thought we
had grieved him some way.
“Well, is he coming?” cried Catherine, when her cousin returned.
“Nay,” he answered; “but he’s not angry: he seemed rarely pleased
indeed; only I made him impatient by speaking to him twice; and then he
bid me be off to you: he wondered how I could want the company of
anybody else.”
I set his plate to keep warm on the fender; and after an hour or two he
re-entered, when the room was clear, in no degree calmer: the same
unnatural—it was unnatural—appearance of joy under his black brows; the
same bloodless hue, and his teeth visible, now and then, in a kind of
smile; his frame shivering, not as one shivers with chill or weakness,
but as a tight-stretched cord vibrates—a strong thrilling, rather than
trembling.
I will ask what is the matter, I thought; or who should? And I
exclaimed—“Have you heard any good news, Mr. Heathcliff? You look
uncommonly animated.”
“Where should good news come from to me?” he said. “I’m animated with
hunger; and, seemingly, I must not eat.”
“Your dinner is here,” I returned; “why won’t you get it?”
“I don’t want it now,” he muttered, hastily: “I’ll wait till supper.
And, Nelly, once for all, let me beg you to warn Hareton and the other
away from me. I wish to be troubled by nobody: I wish to have this
place to myself.”
“Is there some new reason for this banishment?” I inquired. “Tell me
why you are so queer, Mr. Heathcliff? Where were you last night? I’m
not putting the question through idle curiosity, but—”
“You are putting the question through very idle curiosity,” he
interrupted, with a laugh. “Yet I’ll answer it. Last night I was on the
threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven. I have my
eyes on it: hardly three feet to sever me! And now you’d better go!
You’ll neither see nor hear anything to frighten you, if you refrain
from prying.”
Having swept the hearth and wiped the table, I departed; more perplexed
than ever.
He did not quit the house again that afternoon, and no one intruded on
his solitude; till, at eight o’clock, I deemed it proper, though
unsummoned, to carry a candle and his supper to him. He was leaning
against the ledge of an open lattice, but not looking out: his face was
turned to the interior gloom. The fire had smouldered to ashes; the
room was filled with the damp, mild air of the cloudy evening; and so
still, that not only the murmur of the beck down Gimmerton was
distinguishable, but its ripples and its gurgling over the pebbles, or
through the large stones which it could not cover. I uttered an
ejaculation of discontent at seeing the dismal grate, and commenced
shutting the casements, one after another, till I came to his.
“Must I close this?” I asked, in order to rouse him; for he would not
stir.
The light flashed on his features as I spoke. Oh, Mr. Lockwood, I
cannot express what a terrible start I got by the momentary view! Those
deep black eyes! That smile, and ghastly paleness! It appeared to me,
not Mr. Heathcliff, but a goblin; and, in my terror, I let the candle
bend towards the wall, and it left me in darkness.
“Yes, close it,” he replied, in his familiar voice. “There, that is
pure awkwardness! Why did you hold the candle horizontally? Be quick,
and bring another.”
I hurried out in a foolish state of dread, and said to Joseph—“The
master wishes you to take him a light and rekindle the fire.” For I
dared not go in myself again just then.
Joseph rattled some fire into the shovel, and went: but he brought it
back immediately, with the supper-tray in his other hand, explaining
that Mr. Heathcliff was going to bed, and he wanted nothing to eat till
morning. We heard him mount the stairs directly; he did not proceed to
his ordinary chamber, but turned into that with the panelled bed: its
window, as I mentioned before, is wide enough for anybody to get
through; and it struck me that he plotted another midnight excursion,
of which he had rather we had no suspicion.
“Is he a ghoul or a vampire?” I mused. I had read of such hideous
incarnate demons. And then I set myself to reflect how I had tended him
in infancy, and watched him grow to youth, and followed him almost
through his whole course; and what absurd nonsense it was to yield to
that sense of horror. “But where did he come from, the little dark
thing, harboured by a good man to his bane?” muttered Superstition, as
I dozed into unconsciousness. And I began, half dreaming, to weary
myself with imagining some fit parentage for him; and, repeating my
waking meditations, I tracked his existence over again, with grim
variations; at last, picturing his death and funeral: of which, all I
can remember is, being exceedingly vexed at having the task of
dictating an inscription for his monument, and consulting the sexton
about it; and, as he had no surname, and we could not tell his age, we
were obliged to content ourselves with the single word, “Heathcliff.”
That came true: we were. If you enter the kirkyard, you’ll read, on his
headstone, only that, and the date of his death.
Dawn restored me to common sense. I rose, and went into the garden, as
soon as I could see, to ascertain if there were any footmarks under his
window. There were none. “He has stayed at home,” I thought, “and he’ll
be all right to-day.” I prepared breakfast for the household, as was my
usual custom, but told Hareton and Catherine to get theirs ere the
master came down, for he lay late. They preferred taking it out of
doors, under the trees, and I set a little table to accommodate them.
On my re-entrance, I found Mr. Heathcliff below. He and Joseph were
conversing about some farming business; he gave clear, minute
directions concerning the matter discussed, but he spoke rapidly, and
turned his head continually aside, and had the same excited expression,
even more exaggerated. When Joseph quitted the room he took his seat in
the place he generally chose, and I put a basin of coffee before him.
He drew it nearer, and then rested his arms on the table, and looked at
the opposite wall, as I supposed, surveying one particular portion, up
and down, with glittering, restless eyes, and with such eager interest
that he stopped breathing during half a minute together.
“Come now,” I exclaimed, pushing some bread against his hand, “eat and
drink that, while it is hot: it has been waiting near an hour.”
He didn’t notice me, and yet he smiled. I’d rather have seen him gnash
his teeth than smile so.
“Mr. Heathcliff! master!” I cried, “don’t, for God’s sake, stare as if
you saw an unearthly vision.”
“Don’t, for God’s sake, shout so loud,” he replied. “Turn round, and
tell me, are we by ourselves?”
“Of course,” was my answer; “of course we are.”
Still, I involuntarily obeyed him, as if I was not quite sure. With a
sweep of his hand he cleared a vacant space in front among the
breakfast things, and leant forward to gaze more at his ease.
Now, I perceived he was not looking at the wall; for when I regarded
him alone, it seemed exactly that he gazed at something within two
yards’ distance. And whatever it was, it communicated, apparently, both
pleasure and pain in exquisite extremes: at least the anguished, yet
raptured, expression of his countenance suggested that idea. The
fancied object was not fixed, either: his eyes pursued it with
unwearied diligence, and, even in speaking to me, were never weaned
away. I vainly reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food: if
he stirred to touch anything in compliance with my entreaties, if he
stretched his hand out to get a piece of bread, his fingers clenched
before they reached it, and remained on the table, forgetful of their
aim.
I sat, a model of patience, trying to attract his absorbed attention
from its engrossing speculation; till he grew irritable, and got up,
asking why I would not allow him to have his own time in taking his
meals? and saying that on the next occasion I needn’t wait: I might set
the things down and go. Having uttered these words he left the house,
slowly sauntered down the garden path, and disappeared through the
gate.
The hours crept anxiously by: another evening came. I did not retire to
rest till late, and when I did, I could not sleep. He returned after
midnight, and, instead of going to bed, shut himself into the room
beneath. I listened, and tossed about, and, finally, dressed and
descended. It was too irksome to lie there, harassing my brain with a
hundred idle misgivings.
I distinguished Mr. Heathcliff’s step, restlessly measuring the floor,
and he frequently broke the silence by a deep inspiration, resembling a
groan. He muttered detached words also; the only one I could catch was
the name of Catherine, coupled with some wild term of endearment or
suffering; and spoken as one would speak to a person present; low and
earnest, and wrung from the depth of his soul. I had not courage to
walk straight into the apartment; but I desired to divert him from his
reverie, and therefore fell foul of the kitchen fire, stirred it, and
began to scrape the cinders. It drew him forth sooner than I expected.
He opened the door immediately, and said—“Nelly, come here—is it
morning? Come in with your light.”
“It is striking four,” I answered. “You want a candle to take upstairs:
you might have lit one at this fire.”
“No, I don’t wish to go upstairs,” he said. “Come in, and kindle _me_ a
fire, and do anything there is to do about the room.”
“I must blow the coals red first, before I can carry any,” I replied,
getting a chair and the bellows.
He roamed to and fro, meantime, in a state approaching distraction; his
heavy sighs succeeding each other so thick as to leave no space for
common breathing between.
“When day breaks I’ll send for Green,” he said; “I wish to make some
legal inquiries of him while I can bestow a thought on those matters,
and while I can act calmly. I have not written my will yet; and how to
leave my property I cannot determine. I wish I could annihilate it from
the face of the earth.”
“I would not talk so, Mr. Heathcliff,” I interposed. “Let your will be
a while: you’ll be spared to repent of your many injustices yet! I
never expected that your nerves would be disordered: they are, at
present, marvellously so, however; and almost entirely through your own
fault. The way you’ve passed these three last days might knock up a
Titan. Do take some food, and some repose. You need only look at
yourself in a glass to see how you require both. Your cheeks are
hollow, and your eyes blood-shot, like a person starving with hunger
and going blind with loss of sleep.”
“It is not my fault that I cannot eat or rest,” he replied. “I assure
you it is through no settled designs. I’ll do both, as soon as I
possibly can. But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water
rest within arms’ length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then
I’ll rest. Well, never mind Mr. Green: as to repenting of my
injustices, I’ve done no injustice, and I repent of nothing. I’m too
happy; and yet I’m not happy enough. My soul’s bliss kills my body, but
does not satisfy itself.”
“Happy, master?” I cried. “Strange happiness! If you would hear me
without being angry, I might offer some advice that would make you
happier.”
“What is that?” he asked. “Give it.”
“You are aware, Mr. Heathcliff,” I said, “that from the time you were
thirteen years old you have lived a selfish, unchristian life; and
probably hardly had a Bible in your hands during all that period. You
must have forgotten the contents of the book, and you may not have
space to search it now. Could it be hurtful to send for some one—some
minister of any denomination, it does not matter which—to explain it,
and show you how very far you have erred from its precepts; and how
unfit you will be for its heaven, unless a change takes place before
you die?”
“I’m rather obliged than angry, Nelly,” he said, “for you remind me of
the manner in which I desire to be buried. It is to be carried to the
churchyard in the evening. You and Hareton may, if you please,
accompany me: and mind, particularly, to notice that the sexton obeys
my directions concerning the two coffins! No minister need come; nor
need anything be said over me.—I tell you I have nearly attained _my_
heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me.”
“And supposing you persevered in your obstinate fast, and died by that
means, and they refused to bury you in the precincts of the kirk?” I
said, shocked at his godless indifference. “How would you like it?”
“They won’t do that,” he replied: “if they did, you must have me
removed secretly; and if you neglect it you shall prove, practically,
that the dead are not annihilated!”
As soon as he heard the other members of the family stirring he retired
to his den, and I breathed freer. But in the afternoon, while Joseph
and Hareton were at their work, he came into the kitchen again, and,
with a wild look, bid me come and sit in the house: he wanted somebody
with him. I declined; telling him plainly that his strange talk and
manner frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will to be
his companion alone.
“I believe you think me a fiend,” he said, with his dismal laugh:
“something too horrible to live under a decent roof.” Then turning to
Catherine, who was there, and who drew behind me at his approach, he
added, half sneeringly,—“Will _you_ come, chuck? I’ll not hurt you. No!
to you I’ve made myself worse than the devil. Well, there is _one_ who
won’t shrink from my company! By God! she’s relentless. Oh, damn it!
It’s unutterably too much for flesh and blood to bear—even mine.”
He solicited the society of no one more. At dusk he went into his
chamber. Through the whole night, and far into the morning, we heard
him groaning and murmuring to himself. Hareton was anxious to enter;
but I bid him fetch Mr. Kenneth, and he should go in and see him. When
he came, and I requested admittance and tried to open the door, I found
it locked; and Heathcliff bid us be damned. He was better, and would be
left alone; so the doctor went away.
The following evening was very wet: indeed, it poured down till
day-dawn; and, as I took my morning walk round the house, I observed
the master’s window swinging open, and the rain driving straight in. He
cannot be in bed, I thought: those showers would drench him through. He
must either be up or out. But I’ll make no more ado, I’ll go boldly and
look.
Having succeeded in obtaining entrance with another key, I ran to
unclose the panels, for the chamber was vacant; quickly pushing them
aside, I peeped in. Mr. Heathcliff was there—laid on his back. His eyes
met mine so keen and fierce, I started; and then he seemed to smile. I
could not think him dead: but his face and throat were washed with
rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still. The lattice,
flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill; no
blood trickled from the broken skin, and when I put my fingers to it, I
could doubt no more: he was dead and stark!
I hasped the window; I combed his black long hair from his forehead; I
tried to close his eyes: to extinguish, if possible, that frightful,
life-like gaze of exultation before any one else beheld it. They would
not shut: they seemed to sneer at my attempts; and his parted lips and
sharp white teeth sneered too! Taken with another fit of cowardice, I
cried out for Joseph. Joseph shuffled up and made a noise, but
resolutely refused to meddle with him.
“Th’ divil’s harried off his soul,” he cried, “and he may hev’ his
carcass into t’ bargin, for aught I care! Ech! what a wicked ’un he
looks, girning at death!” and the old sinner grinned in mockery. I
thought he intended to cut a caper round the bed; but suddenly
composing himself, he fell on his knees, and raised his hands, and
returned thanks that the lawful master and the ancient stock were
restored to their rights.
I felt stunned by the awful event; and my memory unavoidably recurred
to former times with a sort of oppressive sadness. But poor Hareton,
the most wronged, was the only one who really suffered much. He sat by
the corpse all night, weeping in bitter earnest. He pressed its hand,
and kissed the sarcastic, savage face that every one else shrank from
contemplating; and bemoaned him with that strong grief which springs
naturally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tempered steel.
Mr. Kenneth was perplexed to pronounce of what disorder the master
died. I concealed the fact of his having swallowed nothing for four
days, fearing it might lead to trouble, and then, I am persuaded, he
did not abstain on purpose: it was the consequence of his strange
illness, not the cause.
We buried him, to the scandal of the whole neighbourhood, as he wished.
Earnshaw and I, the sexton, and six men to carry the coffin,
comprehended the whole attendance. The six men departed when they had
let it down into the grave: we stayed to see it covered. Hareton, with
a streaming face, dug green sods, and laid them over the brown mould
himself: at present it is as smooth and verdant as its companion
mounds—and I hope its tenant sleeps as soundly. But the country folks,
if you ask them, would swear on the Bible that he _walks_: there are
those who speak to having met him near the church, and on the moor, and
even within this house. Idle tales, you’ll say, and so say I. Yet that
old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on ’em looking out
of his chamber window on every rainy night since his death:—and an odd
thing happened to me about a month ago. I was going to the Grange one
evening—a dark evening, threatening thunder—and, just at the turn of
the Heights, I encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs
before him; he was crying terribly; and I supposed the lambs were
skittish, and would not be guided.
“What is the matter, my little man?” I asked.
“There’s Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t’ nab,” he blubbered,
“un’ I darnut pass ’em.”
I saw nothing; but neither the sheep nor he would go on, so I bid him
take the road lower down. He probably raised the phantoms from
thinking, as he traversed the moors alone, on the nonsense he had heard
his parents and companions repeat. Yet, still, I don’t like being out
in the dark now; and I don’t like being left by myself in this grim
house: I cannot help it; I shall be glad when they leave it, and shift
to the Grange.
“They are going to the Grange, then?” I said.
“Yes,” answered Mrs. Dean, “as soon as they are married, and that will
be on New Year’s Day.”
“And who will live here then?”
“Why, Joseph will take care of the house, and, perhaps, a lad to keep
him company. They will live in the kitchen, and the rest will be shut
up.”
“For the use of such ghosts as choose to inhabit it?” I observed.
“No, Mr. Lockwood,” said Nelly, shaking her head. “I believe the dead
are at peace: but it is not right to speak of them with levity.”
At that moment the garden gate swung to; the ramblers were returning.
“_They_ are afraid of nothing,” I grumbled, watching their approach
through the window. “Together, they would brave Satan and all his
legions.”
As they stepped on to the door-stones, and halted to take a last look
at the moon—or, more correctly, at each other by her light—I felt
irresistibly impelled to escape them again; and, pressing a remembrance
into the hand of Mrs. Dean, and disregarding her expostulations at my
rudeness, I vanished through the kitchen as they opened the house-door;
and so should have confirmed Joseph in his opinion of his
fellow-servant’s gay indiscretions, had he not fortunately recognised
me for a respectable character by the sweet ring of a sovereign at his
feet.
My walk home was lengthened by a diversion in the direction of the
kirk. When beneath its walls, I perceived decay had made progress, even
in seven months: many a window showed black gaps deprived of glass; and
slates jutted off, here and there, beyond the right line of the roof,
to be gradually worked off in coming autumn storms.
I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next
the moor: the middle one grey, and half buried in heath; Edgar Linton’s
only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff’s
still bare.
I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths
fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind
breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever
imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.