Wuthering Heights

Chapter 35

"Miss came in," she said, "cold as an icicle and proud as a princess. I rose and offered her my easy chair. No, she turned her nose up, oblivious to my courtesy. Earnshaw got up too, and begged her to sit in the high-backed chair by the fire, where he reckoned she was famished with hunger.

"'The word 'starve' here really means to be frozen. It's been over a month," she replied, putting the accent on the word, as contemptuously as possible.

"She took a chair herself and put it away from the two of us.

"She sat there until her body warmed up, and began to look around, and saw several books in the cabinet. She immediately stood up again, and stretched out her hand to get the book, but the book was too high.

"Her cousin watched her work for a while. Finally he plucked up the courage and came to help her. She pocketed her clothes, and the first few books he reached filled her pocket full.

"It was a great improvement for the child. She didn't thank him. But he was still flattered that she accepted his help. He dared to stand behind her and even stooped down as she turned the pages of the book, Pointed her to some old illustrations in the book which had so excited his imagination. The arrogance with which she flung the pages out of his way to keep his fingers from touching them did not discourage him. After a moment's retreat he recovered his composure, and instead of reading the book read wake her up.

"She went on reading, or looking for something to read. His attention dwindled to the study of her thick, shiny curls—he couldn't see her face, and she couldn't see him. And, perhaps not quite knowing what he was doing. Just being attracted to a candle like a child, he went from seeing to touching. He reached out and stroked a lock of curly hair as gently as a caress. A bird. She turned around with a jerk like a stab in the neck.

"'Get off, get off now! How dare you touch me? What are you standing here for?' she cried, with disgust in her voice. 'I can't stand you! If you come near me, I'll go upstairs again. '

"Hareton drew back, as silly as he could have been. He sat quietly in the high chair, and she went on flipping through her book for another half hour. At last Hareton came up, whisper to me:

"'Would you ask her to read it to us, Zilla? I'm bored with nothing to do, and I really like it, and I can like hearing her talk! Don't say I made her read it, but you. '

"'Mr. Hareton would like you to read it to us, ma'am,' I said at once. 'He will appreciate it. He will be very grateful.'

"She frowned, then raised her head and answered:
"'Mr. Hareton, and you lot, please understand that I refuse all of your sham favourites! I despise you and have nothing to say to any of you! When I For a word of warmth, you all ran away when even seeing a face among you would give your life. But I don't blame you! I was driven down by the cold, not to please you .Not that I like your company.'

"'What have I done wrong?' began Hareton. 'How am I to blame?'

"'Oh! You are an exception,' replied Mrs. Heathcliff. 'I never expected such attention from you.'

"'However, I have more than once suggested, and begged,' said he, quickened by her arrogance, 'that I beg Mr. Heathcliff to let me keep watch for you—'

"'Shut up! I'd rather go out than go anywhere, than hear your annoying voice in my ears!' said my wife.

"Hareton grunted that it seemed to him that she ought to go to hell! He took down his gun, and set himself free, and went back to his Sunday work.

"He speaks freely now. She saw then that it was time to retire to her solitary little room. But the frost had come, and though she was proud in her heart she could not condescend, and more and more but I also took care not to let my good intentions be despised any longer. Since then, I have been as cold as she is, and there is no one among us who loves her or likes her, she She doesn't deserve it either, because if anyone says a word to her, she will curl up and shrink back, showing no face at all! She always rushes at her master, just begging for a beating. And the more she is hurt, the more vicious she becomes."

At first, after hearing Zilla's words, I decided to resign my errand, take a hut, and take Catherine to live with me.But asking Heathcliff to agree is as hopeless as asking him to let Hareton stand on his own.So right now I don't see any solution, unless she can remarry, it's beyond my ability to plan.

And so Mrs. Dean ended her story.In spite of the doctor's predictions, I am rapidly regaining my strength, and, though it is only the second week in January, I have already intended to ride to Wuthering Heights in a day or two, and to inform my landlord that I will be in London for the next six months. Over, if he likes, he can find another lodger at the Grange after October—I don't want another winter here, anyway.

Yesterday was sunny and clear with frost.I went to Wuthering Heights as I said.My housekeeper begged me to send her a note to her lady, which I did not refuse, as the venerable woman did not find her request out of the ordinary.

The front door was open, but the gate of jealousy was closed, exactly as it was on my last visit.I knocked and led Earnshaw from the flower-bed, and he unchained the gate, and I entered.The guy was pretty good-looking for country people.This time I paid special attention to him, but it was obvious that he had ruined himself on purpose.

I asked Mr. Heathcliff if he was at home.He replied, no, he would be home at lunchtime.It was eleven o'clock at this time, and I said I wanted to go inside and wait for him. As soon as he heard about it, he immediately dropped the tools in his hand.Come with me.He is not acting as the master on behalf of him, he is actually fulfilling the duties of a watchdog.

We went in together.Catherine was there, doing her chores, fiddling with some vegetables for lunch.She looked more sullen and listless than when I first saw her.She hardly raised her eyes to look at me, she was busy with her work, with the same disregard for basic etiquette as before.I bowed to her and said good morning, but she didn't answer.

"She doesn't look all that talkative," I thought, "as Mrs. Dean would have me believe. She's a beauty, yes, but not an angel."

Earnshaw bade her take her things into the kitchen roughly.

"Take it yourself," she said, and once she was done tidying up, she pushed the vegetables forward, retreated to a stool in front of the window, and began to use some radish skins in her arms to carve some birds and beasts. shape out.

I went forward, pretending to have a look at the garden.Then.She thought she was clever enough to drop Mrs. Dean's note on her lap, but she asked aloud:

"What's that?" He threw it away with a flick of his hand.

"It's a letter from your old friend, housekeeper of the Grange," I answered, annoyed at the exposure of my goodness, but fearful that she might mistake it for my own.

As I say, she would have been glad to pick up the letter, but Hareton was there first, and slipped it into his waistcoat, saying Mr. Heathcliff should see it first.

Then Catherine turned away in silence, and furtively took out her little handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.Her cousin struggled for a moment not to be too soft-hearted, and finally pulled out the letter and threw it on the floor beside her, as rough as it was.

Catherine picked up the letter and read it eagerly.She asked me a few questions.When I asked her how the people in her hometown were doing, the questions were either clear or vague.Then she gazed at the hills outside the window and said to herself:
"I'd like to ride a Mini, and I'd like to climb over there, oh! I'm tired and imprisoned, Hareton!"

She leaned her beautiful head against the window rail, half yawning, half sighing, lost in a dreamy sorrow, neither caring nor knowing whether we were looking at her or not.

"Mrs. Heathcliff," said I, after sitting quietly for a while, "don't you know that I am an acquaintance of yours? I know your story so well that I find it strange that you don't come and talk to me." My housekeeper never gets tired of talking about you and praising you. If I go back and say that you have received her letter and then said nothing, but not about how you are now, and there is no letter or letter from you, she will Disappointed, she seemed a little surprised to hear this, and asked:
"Does Ellen like you?"

"Yes, very much," I replied without hesitation.

"You must tell her," she went on, "that I meant to answer her letter, but I have nothing to write on, not even a book to tear a page from."

"No books!" I yelled. "How can you get on here without books? If I may venture to say so, though the Grange has a big study, I'm always terrified of boredom, and if my books were taken away I'd be mad!"

"I always read books when I had them," said Catherine, "and Mr. Heathcliff never read, so it was his idea to destroy mine. For weeks I hadn't had a book." Take a peek. Only once did I search Joseph's theological library and it made him very angry. Another time, Hareton, I came across a large collection of books in your room...some in Latin and Greek Yes, some stories and poems, all old friends--I brought the poems. You collect them like magpies collect silver spoons, purely for stealing! They are of no use to you, or you Hid them deliberately, so you can't read them, and no one else can read them. Perhaps your jealousy has encouraged Heathcliff to rob me of my treasures? But most of them have been written in my head, It's imprinted on my heart, and you can't take it away!" "

Earnshaw blushed and stammered bitterly in denial of her accusation when her cousin exposed his private accumulation of literature.

"Mr. Hareton is intent on increasing his knowledge," I said in his relief. "He is not jealous, but envious of your talent. In a few years, he will be a smart scholar."

"At the same time he wants me to degenerate into a fool," Catherine replied. "Yeah, I heard him spelling it to himself, full of mistakes! I hope you repeat 'chasing and chasing' like you did yesterday, it's so funny! I hear... I hear you flipping Dictionary, to look up new words and then curse because you can't read the explanation of those words!""

The young man obviously felt embarrassed. He was first ridiculed for being stupid, and then he wanted to get rid of his stupidity, but was laughed at again.I felt much the same way, and I remembered the story Dean told about how he had originally planned to be freed from the ignorance that he had been with him since he was a child, and I said:
"But, Mrs. Heathcliff, we all had a beginning, we all stumbled on the threshold, and if our mentors laughed at us instead of helping us, we would still be stumbling to this day."

"Oh!" she replied, "I don't want to limit their progress... But he still has no right to own my things, and he is so full of mistakes and nonsense that it makes me laugh! These books, Both prose and verse, because there are other associations in it, are sacred to me. I hate them being sullied and profaned in his mouth! Besides, out of so many books, he chose me as my favorite to repeat The beloved chapter I recited, like a troublemaker!"

Hareton was silent, and his chest rose and fell for a moment.He was struggling repeatedly under extreme anger and humiliation, and it was really not easy to suppress them.

I stood up, trying to be a gentleman and relieve him of his embarrassment.I stood at the door and watched the scenery outside.

Following my example, he also left the room, only to return in a second with six or seven books in his hand.He threw the books into Catherine's lap, and cried:

"Take it! I will never hear, read or think of them any more!"

"I don't want it," she replied. "I think of you because of them, and I hate them."

She opened a book that she obviously flipped through a lot, imitated the accent she had just learned to read, read a paragraph in a drawn voice, then laughed, and threw the book away with a wave of her hand.

"Listen," she added defiantly, repeating, as before, a verse from an old ballad.

But his self-esteem could no longer bear this kind of torture.I heard a hand to stop her haughty tongue, which I don't entirely disapprove of - the little rascal is out to hurt her cousin, who is ill-bred, but he's still sensitive, and violence is his revenge the only way.

Then he gathered the book up and threw it into the fire.I could see in his countenance what anguish it was in his heart to offer this sacrifice to wrath.I think, as they burned, he must have thought of the joy they had given him, and the triumphs and growing joys he had seen in books.I also guessed, I think, the motives of his secret studies.Satisfied with his daily labors and wild animal pleasures, Catherine's presence, ashamed of her scorn and expected of her approval, became the first beginning of his higher quest. motivation.But instead of avoiding humiliation and winning approval, his hard work backfired.

"Yeah, that's what a brute like you can get out of them!" cried Catherine, sucking her wounded lower lip, and staring furiously at the blazing flame.

"You'd better shut up at once!" he replied fiercely.

He was so excited that he couldn't speak any more, so he rushed towards the door, and I got out of the way and let him go.But before he had time to step over the stone steps in front of the door, Mr. Heathcliff, walking up the stone path, bumped into him, grabbed his shoulder and asked:

"What's the point, my boy?"

"Don't do it, don't do it!" he said, and broke free, to enjoy his sadness and anger alone.

Heathcliff stared at his background and sighed.

"It would be strange if I ruined it in my own hands!" he said to himself, and I was behind him unconsciously. "However, I looked for his father in his face, but I saw her more and more every day! How can this ghost thing look like this? I can't see him."

His eyes fell to the ground, and he entered the room sullenly.There was a restless look on his face which I had never seen in him, and he himself looked thinner.

His daughter-in-law saw him coming in from the window and slipped into the kitchen, so I was left there alone.

"I'm glad to see you're going out again, Mr. Lockwood," he answered my greeting, "from half selfish motives. I don't think I'd It can be easily filled. I have been wondering, more than once or twice, what kind of wind brought you here."

"I'm afraid it's just boredom and whimsy, sir," I replied, "or else I'm going to be driven away again. I'm going to London next week, and I'll have to let you know in advance. After the twelve months I had promised to let Thrushcross Grange, I had no intention of keeping it. I am sure I shall never live there again."

"Oh, really! You're tired of being cut off from the world, aren't you?" he said. "However, if you beg me to stop paying the rent because you no longer live there, you will be in vain. I have never been ambiguous about the rent I should charge, and it is the same for everyone."

"I didn't come to overpay or underpay the rent!" I cried, very annoyed. "If you want, I'll settle the score with you." I took my wallet out of my pocket.

"No, no," he replied coldly, "you will leave enough money to pay off the debt, if you don't come back... I am not in such a hurry, sit down to lunch with us Returning guests are generally welcome. Catherine! Bring the things here, where are you?"

Catherine reappeared with a plate of knives and forks.

"You can dine with Joseph," whispered Heathcliff, "and stay in the kitchen till he's gone."

She carried out his orders so accurately that perhaps she was not tempted to disobey.Living among country bumpkins and misanthropists, even if he met someone better, he probably wouldn't come to appreciate it.

With the cold and gloomy Heathcliff on the one hand, and the utterly silent Hareton on the other, I had an unappetizing meal and took my leave early.I would have gone by the back door, to have one last look at Catherine, and to be angry with old Joseph, but Hareton was ordered to bring out my horse, and my master himself accompanied me to the door, so I could not do so.

"How dreary life is for that family!" thought I, as we rode down the hill. "If Mrs. Linton Heathcliff fell in love with me at first sight, as her good nurse hoped, and then moved to the bustling city together, what a blessing it would be to her. It is more romantic than a fairy tale. ah!"

[-].In September of this year, at the invitation of a friend in the north, I went hunting in his wilderness.On my way to his house, I came unexpectedly within fifteen miles of Gimmerton.In an inn by the roadside, the groom brought a pail of water to drink for my horses, when a cart of green oats, freshly harvested, passed by, and he said:
"That's from Gimmerton! They always reap three weeks behind the others."

"Gimmerton?" I replied, my stay in that place had become vague, like a dream. "Ah! I know! How far is it from here?"

"It's about fourteen miles over these hills, and the road is not easy," he replied.

(End of this chapter)