Wuthering Heights (1847)

Chapter VII

Cathy stayed at Thrushcross Grange five weeks: till Christmas.  By that time her ankle was thoroughly cured, and her manners much improved.  The mistress visited her often in the interval, and commenced her plan of reform by trying to raise her self-respect with fine clothes and flattery, which she took readily; so that, instead of a wild, hatless little savage jumping into the house, and rushing to squeeze us all breathless, there ‘lighted from a handsome black pony a very dignified person, with brown ringlets falling from the cover of a feathered beaver, and a long cloth habit, which she was obliged to hold up with both hands that she might sail in.  Hindley lifted her from her horse, exclaiming delightedly, ‘Why, Cathy, you are quite a beauty!  I should scarcely have known you: you look like a lady now.  Isabella Linton is not to be compared with her, is she, Frances?’  ‘Isabella has not her natural advantages,’ replied his wife: ‘but she must mind and not grow wild again here.  Ellen, help Miss Catherine off with her things—Stay, dear, you will disarrange your curls—let me untie your hat.’

I removed the habit, and there shone forth beneath a grand plaid silk frock, white trousers, and burnished shoes; and, while her eyes sparkled joyfully when the dogs came bounding up to welcome her, she dared hardly touch them lest they should fawn upon her splendid garments.  She kissed me gently: I was all flour making the Christmas cake, and it would not have done to give me a hug; and then she looked round for Heathcliff.  Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw watched anxiously their meeting; thinking it would enable them to judge, in some measure, what grounds they had for hoping to succeed in separating the two friends.

Heathcliff was hard to discover, at first.  If he were careless, and uncared for, before Catherine’s absence, he had been ten times more so since.  Nobody but I even did him the kindness to call him a dirty boy, and bid him wash himself, once a week; and children of his age seldom have a natural pleasure in soap and water.  Therefore, not to mention his clothes, which had seen three months’ service in mire and dust, and his thick uncombed hair, the surface of his face and hands was dismally beclouded.  He might well skulk behind the settle, on beholding such a bright, graceful damsel enter the house, instead of a rough-headed counterpart of himself, as he expected.  ‘Is Heathcliff not here?’ she demanded, pulling off her gloves, and displaying fingers wonderfully whitened with doing nothing and staying indoors.

‘Heathcliff, you may come forward,’ cried Mr. Hindley, enjoying his discomfiture, and gratified to see what a forbidding young blackguard he would be compelled to present himself.  ‘You may come and wish Miss Catherine welcome, like the other servants.’

Cathy, catching a glimpse of her friend in his concealment, flew to embrace him; she bestowed seven or eight kisses on his cheek within the second, and then stopped, and drawing back, burst into a laugh, exclaiming, ‘Why, how very black and cross you look! and how—how funny and grim!  But that’s because I’m used to Edgar and Isabella Linton.  Well, Heathcliff, have you forgotten me?’

She had some reason to put the question, for shame and pride threw double gloom over his countenance, and kept him immovable.

‘Shake hands, Heathcliff,’ said Mr. Earnshaw, condescendingly; ‘once in a way that is permitted.’

‘I shall not,’ replied the boy, finding his tongue at last; ‘I shall not stand to be laughed at.  I shall not bear it!’  And he would have broken from the circle, but Miss Cathy seized him again.

‘I did not mean to laugh at you,’ she said; ‘I could not hinder myself: Heathcliff, shake hands at least!  What are you sulky for?  It was only that you looked odd.  If you wash your face and brush your hair, it will be all right: but you are so dirty!’

She gazed concernedly at the dusky fingers she held in her own, and also at her dress; which she feared had gained no embellishment from its contact with his.