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 up-stairs, 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.