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.