Chapter XIV

As soon as I had perused this epistle I went to the master, and
informed him that his sister had arrived at the Heights, and sent me a
letter expressing her sorrow for Mrs. Linton’s situation, and her
ardent desire to see him; with a wish that he would transmit to her, as
early as possible, some token of forgiveness by me.

“Forgiveness!” said Linton. “I have nothing to forgive her, Ellen. You
may call at Wuthering Heights this afternoon, if you like, and say that
I am not angry, but I’m sorry to have lost her; especially as I can
never think she’ll be happy. It is out of the question my going to see
her, however: we are eternally divided; and should she really wish to
oblige me, let her persuade the villain she has married to leave the
country.”

“And you won’t write her a little note, sir?” I asked, imploringly.

“No,” he answered. “It is needless. My communication with Heathcliff’s
family shall be as sparing as his with mine. It shall not exist!”

Mr. Edgar’s coldness depressed me exceedingly; and all the way from the
Grange I puzzled my brains how to put more heart into what he said,
when I repeated it; and how to soften his refusal of even a few lines
to console Isabella. I daresay she had been on the watch for me since
morning: I saw her looking through the lattice as I came up the garden
causeway, and I nodded to her; but she drew back, as if afraid of being
observed. I entered without knocking. There never was such a dreary,
dismal scene as the formerly cheerful house presented! I must confess,
that if I had been in the young lady’s place, I would, at least, have
swept the hearth, and wiped the tables with a duster. But she already
partook of the pervading spirit of neglect which encompassed her. Her
pretty face was wan and listless; her hair uncurled: some locks hanging
lankly down, and some carelessly twisted round her head. Probably she
had not touched her dress since yester evening. Hindley was not there.
Mr. Heathcliff sat at a table, turning over some papers in his
pocket-book; but he rose when I appeared, asked me how I did, quite
friendly, and offered me a chair. He was the only thing there that
seemed decent; and I thought he never looked better. So much had
circumstances altered their positions, that he would certainly have
struck a stranger as a born and bred gentleman; and his wife as a
thorough little slattern! She came forward eagerly to greet me, and
held out one hand to take the expected letter. I shook my head. She
wouldn’t understand the hint, but followed me to a sideboard, where I
went to lay my bonnet, and importuned me in a whisper to give her
directly what I had brought. Heathcliff guessed the meaning of her
manœuvres, and said—“If you have got anything for Isabella (as no
doubt you have, Nelly), give it to her. You needn’t make a secret of
it: we have no secrets between us.”

“Oh, I have nothing,” I replied, thinking it best to speak the truth at
once. “My master bid me tell his sister that she must not expect either
a letter or a visit from him at present. He sends his love, ma’am, and
his wishes for your happiness, and his pardon for the grief you have
occasioned; but he thinks that after this time his household and the
household here should drop intercommunication, as nothing could come of
keeping it up.”

Mrs. Heathcliff’s lip quivered slightly, and she returned to her seat
in the window. Her husband took his stand on the hearthstone, near me,
and began to put questions concerning Catherine. I told him as much as
I thought proper of her illness, and he extorted from me, by
cross-examination, most of the facts connected with its origin. I
blamed her, as she deserved, for bringing it all on herself; and ended
by hoping that he would follow Mr. Linton’s example and avoid future
interference with his family, for good or evil.

“Mrs. Linton is now just recovering,” I said; “she’ll never be like she
was, but her life is spared; and if you really have a regard for her,
you’ll shun crossing her way again: nay, you’ll move out of this
country entirely; and that you may not regret it, I’ll inform you
Catherine Linton is as different now from your old friend Catherine
Earnshaw, as that young lady is different from me. Her appearance is
changed greatly, her character much more so; and the person who is
compelled, of necessity, to be her companion, will only sustain his
affection hereafter by the remembrance of what she once was, by common
humanity, and a sense of duty!”

“That is quite possible,” remarked Heathcliff, forcing himself to seem
calm: “quite possible that your master should have nothing but common
humanity and a sense of duty to fall back upon. But do you imagine that
I shall leave Catherine to his duty and humanity? and can you
compare my feelings respecting Catherine to his? Before you leave this
house, I must exact a promise from you that you’ll get me an interview
with her: consent, or refuse, I will see her! What do you say?”

“I say, Mr. Heathcliff,” I replied, “you must not: you never shall,
through my means. Another encounter between you and the master would
kill her altogether.”

“With your aid that may be avoided,” he continued; “and should there be
danger of such an event—should he be the cause of adding a single
trouble more to her existence—why, I think I shall be justified in
going to extremes! I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether
Catherine would suffer greatly from his loss: the fear that she would
restrains me. And there you see the distinction between our feelings:
had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred
that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against
him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have
banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment
her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drunk his
blood! But, till then—if you don’t believe me, you don’t know me—till
then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his
head!”

“And yet,” I interrupted, “you have no scruples in completely ruining
all hopes of her perfect restoration, by thrusting yourself into her
remembrance now, when she has nearly forgotten you, and involving her
in a new tumult of discord and distress.”

“You suppose she has nearly forgotten me?” he said. “Oh, Nelly! you
know she has not! You know as well as I do, that for every thought she
spends on Linton she spends a thousand on me! At a most miserable
period of my life, I had a notion of the kind: it haunted me on my
return to the neighbourhood last summer; but only her own assurance
could make me admit the horrible idea again. And then, Linton would be
nothing, nor Hindley, nor all the dreams that ever I dreamt. Two words
would comprehend my future—death and hell: existence, after losing
her, would be hell. Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she
valued Edgar Linton’s attachment more than mine. If he loved with all
the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years
as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have: the
sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough as her whole
affection be monopolised by him. Tush! He is scarcely a degree dearer
to her than her dog, or her horse. It is not in him to be loved like
me: how can she love in him what he has not?”

“Catherine and Edgar are as fond of each other as any two people can
be,” cried Isabella, with sudden vivacity. “No one has a right to talk
in that manner, and I won’t hear my brother depreciated in silence!”

“Your brother is wondrous fond of you too, isn’t he?” observed
Heathcliff, scornfully. “He turns you adrift on the world with
surprising alacrity.”

“He is not aware of what I suffer,” she replied. “I didn’t tell him
that.”

“You have been telling him something, then: you have written, have
you?”

“To say that I was married, I did write—you saw the note.”

“And nothing since?”

“No.”

“My young lady is looking sadly the worse for her change of condition,”
I remarked. “Somebody’s love comes short in her case, obviously; whose,
I may guess; but, perhaps, I shouldn’t say.”

“I should guess it was her own,” said Heathcliff. “She degenerates into
a mere slut! She is tired of trying to please me uncommonly early.
You’d hardly credit it, but the very morrow of our wedding she was
weeping to go home. However, she’ll suit this house so much the better
for not being over nice, and I’ll take care she does not disgrace me by
rambling abroad.”

“Well, sir,” returned I, “I hope you’ll consider that Mrs. Heathcliff
is accustomed to be looked after and waited on; and that she has been
brought up like an only daughter, whom every one was ready to serve.
You must let her have a maid to keep things tidy about her, and you
must treat her kindly. Whatever be your notion of Mr. Edgar, you cannot
doubt that she has a capacity for strong attachments, or she wouldn’t
have abandoned the elegancies, and comforts, and friends of her former
home, to fix contentedly, in such a wilderness as this, with you.”

“She abandoned them under a delusion,” he answered; “picturing in me a
hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous
devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature,
so obstinately has she persisted in forming a fabulous notion of my
character and acting on the false impressions she cherished. But, at
last, I think she begins to know me: I don’t perceive the silly smiles
and grimaces that provoked me at first; and the senseless incapability
of discerning that I was in earnest when I gave her my opinion of her
infatuation and herself. It was a marvellous effort of perspicacity to
discover that I did not love her. I believed, at one time, no lessons
could teach her that! And yet it is poorly learnt; for this morning she
announced, as a piece of appalling intelligence, that I had actually
succeeded in making her hate me! A positive labour of Hercules, I
assure you! If it be achieved, I have cause to return thanks. Can I
trust your assertion, Isabella? Are you sure you hate me? If I let you
alone for half a day, won’t you come sighing and wheedling to me again?
I daresay she would rather I had seemed all tenderness before you: it
wounds her vanity to have the truth exposed. But I don’t care who knows
that the passion was wholly on one side: and I never told her a lie
about it. She cannot accuse me of showing one bit of deceitful
softness. The first thing she saw me do, on coming out of the Grange,
was to hang up her little dog; and when she pleaded for it, the first
words I uttered were a wish that I had the hanging of every being
belonging to her, except one: possibly she took that exception for
herself. But no brutality disgusted her: I suppose she has an innate
admiration of it, if only her precious person were secure from injury!
Now, was it not the depth of absurdity—of genuine idiocy, for that
pitiful, slavish, mean-minded brach to dream that I could love her?
Tell your master, Nelly, that I never, in all my life, met with such an
abject thing as she is. She even disgraces the name of Linton; and I’ve
sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, in my experiments on
what she could endure, and still creep shamefully cringing back! But
tell him, also, to set his fraternal and magisterial heart at ease:
that I keep strictly within the limits of the law. I have avoided, up
to this period, giving her the slightest right to claim a separation;
and, what’s more, she’d thank nobody for dividing us. If she desired to
go, she might: the nuisance of her presence outweighs the gratification
to be derived from tormenting her!”

“Mr. Heathcliff,” said I, “this is the talk of a madman; your wife,
most likely, is convinced you are mad; and, for that reason, she has
borne with you hitherto: but now that you say she may go, she’ll
doubtless avail herself of the permission. You are not so bewitched,
ma’am, are you, as to remain with him of your own accord?”

“Take care, Ellen!” answered Isabella, her eyes sparkling irefully;
there was no misdoubting by their expression the full success of her
partner’s endeavours to make himself detested. “Don’t put faith in a
single word he speaks. He’s a lying fiend! a monster, and not a human
being! I’ve been told I might leave him before; and I’ve made the
attempt, but I dare not repeat it! Only, Ellen, promise you’ll not
mention a syllable of his infamous conversation to my brother or
Catherine. Whatever he may pretend, he wishes to provoke Edgar to
desperation: he says he has married me on purpose to obtain power over
him; and he sha’n’t obtain it—I’ll die first! I just hope, I pray, that
he may forget his diabolical prudence and kill me! The single pleasure
I can imagine is to die, or to see him dead!”

“There—that will do for the present!” said Heathcliff. “If you are
called upon in a court of law, you’ll remember her language, Nelly! And
take a good look at that countenance: she’s near the point which would
suit me. No; you’re not fit to be your own guardian, Isabella, now; and
I, being your legal protector, must retain you in my custody, however
distasteful the obligation may be. Go upstairs; I have something to say
to Ellen Dean in private. That’s not the way: upstairs, I tell you!
Why, this is the road upstairs, child!”

He seized, and thrust her from the room; and returned muttering—“I have
no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to
crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and I grind with
greater energy in proportion to the increase of pain.”

“Do you understand what the word pity means?” I said, hastening to
resume my bonnet. “Did you ever feel a touch of it in your life?”

“Put that down!” he interrupted, perceiving my intention to depart.
“You are not going yet. Come here now, Nelly: I must either persuade or
compel you to aid me in fulfilling my determination to see Catherine,
and that without delay. I swear that I meditate no harm: I don’t desire
to cause any disturbance, or to exasperate or insult Mr. Linton; I only
wish to hear from herself how she is, and why she has been ill; and to
ask if anything that I could do would be of use to her. Last night I
was in the Grange garden six hours, and I’ll return there to-night; and
every night I’ll haunt the place, and every day, till I find an
opportunity of entering. If Edgar Linton meets me, I shall not hesitate
to knock him down, and give him enough to insure his quiescence while I
stay. If his servants oppose me, I shall threaten them off with these
pistols. But wouldn’t it be better to prevent my coming in contact with
them, or their master? And you could do it so easily. I’d warn you when
I came, and then you might let me in unobserved, as soon as she was
alone, and watch till I departed, your conscience quite calm: you would
be hindering mischief.”

I protested against playing that treacherous part in my employer’s
house: and, besides, I urged the cruelty and selfishness of his
destroying Mrs. Linton’s tranquillity for his satisfaction. “The
commonest occurrence startles her painfully,” I said. “She’s all
nerves, and she couldn’t bear the surprise, I’m positive. Don’t
persist, sir! or else I shall be obliged to inform my master of your
designs; and he’ll take measures to secure his house and its inmates
from any such unwarrantable intrusions!”

“In that case I’ll take measures to secure you, woman!” exclaimed
Heathcliff; “you shall not leave Wuthering Heights till to-morrow
morning. It is a foolish story to assert that Catherine could not bear
to see me; and as to surprising her, I don’t desire it: you must
prepare her—ask her if I may come. You say she never mentions my name,
and that I am never mentioned to her. To whom should she mention me if
I am a forbidden topic in the house? She thinks you are all spies for
her husband. Oh, I’ve no doubt she’s in hell among you! I guess by her
silence, as much as anything, what she feels. You say she is often
restless, and anxious-looking: is that a proof of tranquillity? You
talk of her mind being unsettled. How the devil could it be otherwise
in her frightful isolation? And that insipid, paltry creature attending
her from duty and humanity! From pity and charity! He might as
well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine
he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares! Let us
settle it at once: will you stay here, and am I to fight my way to
Catherine over Linton and his footman? Or will you be my friend, as you
have been hitherto, and do what I request? Decide! because there is no
reason for my lingering another minute, if you persist in your stubborn
ill-nature!”

Well, Mr. Lockwood, I argued and complained, and flatly refused him
fifty times; but in the long run he forced me to an agreement. I
engaged to carry a letter from him to my mistress; and should she
consent, I promised to let him have intelligence of Linton’s next
absence from home, when he might come, and get in as he was able: I
wouldn’t be there, and my fellow-servants should be equally out of the
way. Was it right or wrong? I fear it was wrong, though expedient. I
thought I prevented another explosion by my compliance; and I thought,
too, it might create a favourable crisis in Catherine’s mental illness:
and then I remembered Mr. Edgar’s stern rebuke of my carrying tales;
and I tried to smooth away all disquietude on the subject, by
affirming, with frequent iteration, that that betrayal of trust, if it
merited so harsh an appellation, should be the last. Notwithstanding,
my journey homeward was sadder than my journey thither; and many
misgivings I had, ere I could prevail on myself to put the missive into
Mrs. Linton’s hand.

But here is Kenneth; I’ll go down, and tell him how much better you
are. My history is dree, as we say, and will serve to while away
another morning.

*

Dree, and dreary! I reflected as the good woman descended to receive
the doctor: and not exactly of the kind which I should have chosen to
amuse me. But never mind! I’ll extract wholesome medicines from Mrs.
Dean’s bitter herbs; and firstly, let me beware of the fascination that
lurks in Catherine Heathcliff’s brilliant eyes. I should be in a
curious taking if I surrendered my heart to that young person, and the
daughter turned out a second edition of the mother.