Chapter XXIX

The evening after the funeral, my young lady and I were seated in the
library; now musing mournfully—one of us despairingly—on our loss, now
venturing conjectures as to the gloomy future.

We had just agreed the best destiny which could await Catherine would
be a permission to continue resident at the Grange; at least during
Linton’s life: he being allowed to join her there, and I to remain as
housekeeper. That seemed rather too favourable an arrangement to be
hoped for; and yet I did hope, and began to cheer up under the prospect
of retaining my home and my employment, and, above all, my beloved
young mistress; when a servant—one of the discarded ones, not yet
departed—rushed hastily in, and said “that devil Heathcliff” was coming
through the court: should he fasten the door in his face?

If we had been mad enough to order that proceeding, we had not time. He
made no ceremony of knocking or announcing his name: he was master, and
availed himself of the master’s privilege to walk straight in, without
saying a word. The sound of our informant’s voice directed him to the
library; he entered and motioning him out, shut the door.

It was the same room into which he had been ushered, as a guest,
eighteen years before: the same moon shone through the window; and the
same autumn landscape lay outside. We had not yet lighted a candle, but
all the apartment was visible, even to the portraits on the wall: the
splendid head of Mrs. Linton, and the graceful one of her husband.
Heathcliff advanced to the hearth. Time had little altered his person
either. There was the same man: his dark face rather sallower and more
composed, his frame a stone or two heavier, perhaps, and no other
difference. Catherine had risen with an impulse to dash out, when she
saw him.

“Stop!” he said, arresting her by the arm. “No more runnings away!
Where would you go? I’m come to fetch you home; and I hope you’ll be a
dutiful daughter and not encourage my son to further disobedience. I
was embarrassed how to punish him when I discovered his part in the
business: he’s such a cobweb, a pinch would annihilate him; but you’ll
see by his look that he has received his due! I brought him down one
evening, the day before yesterday, and just set him in a chair, and
never touched him afterwards. I sent Hareton out, and we had the room
to ourselves. In two hours, I called Joseph to carry him up again; and
since then my presence is as potent on his nerves as a ghost; and I
fancy he sees me often, though I am not near. Hareton says he wakes and
shrieks in the night by the hour together, and calls you to protect him
from me; and, whether you like your precious mate, or not, you must
come: he’s your concern now; I yield all my interest in him to you.”

“Why not let Catherine continue here,” I pleaded, “and send Master
Linton to her? As you hate them both, you’d not miss them: they can
only be a daily plague to your unnatural heart.”

“I’m seeking a tenant for the Grange,” he answered; “and I want my
children about me, to be sure. Besides, that lass owes me her services
for her bread. I’m not going to nurture her in luxury and idleness
after Linton is gone. Make haste and get ready, now; and don’t oblige
me to compel you.”

“I shall,” said Catherine. “Linton is all I have to love in the world,
and though you have done what you could to make him hateful to me, and
me to him, you cannot make us hate each other. And I defy you to hurt
him when I am by, and I defy you to frighten me!”

“You are a boastful champion,” replied Heathcliff; “but I don’t like
you well enough to hurt him: you shall get the full benefit of the
torment, as long as it lasts. It is not I who will make him hateful to
you—it is his own sweet spirit. He’s as bitter as gall at your
desertion and its consequences: don’t expect thanks for this noble
devotion. I heard him draw a pleasant picture to Zillah of what he
would do if he were as strong as I: the inclination is there, and his
very weakness will sharpen his wits to find a substitute for strength.”

“I know he has a bad nature,” said Catherine: “he’s your son. But I’m
glad I’ve a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me, and for that
reason I love him. Mr. Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you;
and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of
thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery. You are
miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him?
Nobody loves you—nobody will cry for you when you die! I wouldn’t
be you!”

Catherine spoke with a kind of dreary triumph: she seemed to have made
up her mind to enter into the spirit of her future family, and draw
pleasure from the griefs of her enemies.

“You shall be sorry to be yourself presently,” said her father-in-law,
“if you stand there another minute. Begone, witch, and get your
things!”

She scornfully withdrew. In her absence I began to beg for Zillah’s
place at the Heights, offering to resign mine to her; but he would
suffer it on no account. He bid me be silent; and then, for the first
time, allowed himself a glance round the room and a look at the
pictures. Having studied Mrs. Linton’s, he said—“I shall have that
home. Not because I need it, but—” He turned abruptly to the fire, and
continued, with what, for lack of a better word, I must call a
smile—“I’ll tell you what I did yesterday! I got the sexton, who was
digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I
opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there: when I saw her
face again—it is hers yet!—he had hard work to stir me; but he said it
would change if the air blew on it, and so I struck one side of the
coffin loose, and covered it up: not Linton’s side, damn him! I wish
he’d been soldered in lead. And I bribed the sexton to pull it away
when I’m laid there, and slide mine out too; I’ll have it made so: and
then by the time Linton gets to us he’ll not know which is which!”

“You were very wicked, Mr. Heathcliff!” I exclaimed; “were you not
ashamed to disturb the dead?”

“I disturbed nobody, Nelly,” he replied; “and I gave some ease to
myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you’ll have a
better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed
her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen
years—incessantly—remorselessly—till yesternight; and yesternight I was
tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with
my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.”

“And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you
have dreamt of then?” I said.

“Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still!” he answered. “Do
you suppose I dread any change of that sort? I expected such a
transformation on raising the lid, but I’m better pleased that it should
not commence till I share it. Besides, unless I had received a distinct
impression of her passionless features, that strange feeling would
hardly have been removed. It began oddly. You know I was wild after she
died; and eternally, from dawn to dawn, praying her to return to me her
spirit! I have a strong faith in ghosts: I have a conviction that they
can, and do, exist among us! The day she was buried, there came a fall
of snow. In the evening I went to the churchyard. It blew bleak as
winter—all round was solitary. I didn’t fear that her fool of a husband
would wander up the glen so late; and no one else had business to bring
them there. Being alone, and conscious two yards of loose earth was the
sole barrier between us, I said to myself—‘I’ll have her in my arms
again! If she be cold, I’ll think it is this north wind that chills
me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep.’ I got a spade from the
tool-house, and began to delve with all my might—it scraped the coffin;
I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the
screws; I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that
I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave, and
bending down. ‘If I can only get this off,’ I muttered, ‘I wish they
may shovel in the earth over us both!’ and I wrenched at it more
desperately still. There was another sigh, close at my ear. I appeared
to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleet-laden wind. I knew
no living thing in flesh and blood was by; but, as certainly as you
perceive the approach to some substantial body in the dark, though it
cannot be discerned, so certainly I felt that Cathy was there: not
under me, but on the earth. A sudden sense of relief flowed from my
heart through every limb. I relinquished my labour of agony, and turned
consoled at once: unspeakably consoled. Her presence was with me: it
remained while I re-filled the grave, and led me home. You may laugh,
if you will; but I was sure I should see her there. I was sure she was
with me, and I could not help talking to her. Having reached the
Heights, I rushed eagerly to the door. It was fastened; and, I
remember, that accursed Earnshaw and my wife opposed my entrance. I
remember stopping to kick the breath out of him, and then hurrying
upstairs, to my room and hers. I looked round impatiently—I felt her by
me—I could almost see her, and yet I could not! I ought to have
sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning—from the fervour of
my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed
herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then,
sometimes more and sometimes less, I’ve been the sport of that
intolerable torture! Infernal! keeping my nerves at such a stretch
that, if they had not resembled catgut, they would long ago have
relaxed to the feebleness of Linton’s. When I sat in the house with
Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I walked
on the moors I should meet her coming in. When I went from home I
hastened to return; she must be somewhere at the Heights, I was
certain! And when I slept in her chamber—I was beaten out of that. I
couldn’t lie there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she was either
outside the window, or sliding back the panels, or entering the room,
or even resting her darling head on the same pillow as she did when a
child; and I must open my lids to see. And so I opened and closed them
a hundred times a night—to be always disappointed! It racked me! I’ve
often groaned aloud, till that old rascal Joseph no doubt believed that
my conscience was playing the fiend inside of me. Now, since I’ve seen
her, I’m pacified—a little. It was a strange way of killing: not by
inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the
spectre of a hope through eighteen years!”

Mr. Heathcliff paused and wiped his forehead; his hair clung to it, wet
with perspiration; his eyes were fixed on the red embers of the fire,
the brows not contracted, but raised next the temples; diminishing the
grim aspect of his countenance, but imparting a peculiar look of
trouble, and a painful appearance of mental tension towards one
absorbing subject. He only half addressed me, and I maintained silence.
I didn’t like to hear him talk! After a short period he resumed his
meditation on the picture, took it down and leant it against the sofa
to contemplate it at better advantage; and while so occupied Catherine
entered, announcing that she was ready, when her pony should be
saddled.

“Send that over to-morrow,” said Heathcliff to me; then turning to her,
he added: “You may do without your pony: it is a fine evening, and
you’ll need no ponies at Wuthering Heights; for what journeys you take,
your own feet will serve you. Come along.”

“Good-bye, Ellen!” whispered my dear little mistress. As she kissed me,
her lips felt like ice. “Come and see me, Ellen; don’t forget.”

“Take care you do no such thing, Mrs. Dean!” said her new father. “When
I wish to speak to you I’ll come here. I want none of your prying at my
house!”

He signed her to precede him; and casting back a look that cut my
heart, she obeyed. I watched them, from the window, walk down the
garden. Heathcliff fixed Catherine’s arm under his: though she disputed
the act at first evidently; and with rapid strides he hurried her into
the alley, whose trees concealed them.