Wuthering Heights (1847)

Chapter XVII

That Friday made the last of our fine days for a month.  In the evening the weather broke: the wind shifted from south to north-east, and brought rain first, and then sleet and snow.  On the morrow one could hardly imagine that there had been three weeks of summer: the primroses and crocuses were hidden under wintry drifts; the larks were silent, the young leaves of the early trees smitten and blackened.  And dreary, and chill, and dismal, that morrow did creep over!  My master kept his room; I took possession of the lonely parlour, converting it into a nursery: and there I was, sitting with the moaning doll of a child laid on my knee; rocking it to and fro, and watching, meanwhile, the still driving flakes build up the uncurtained window, when the door opened, and some person entered, out of breath and laughing!  My anger was greater than my astonishment for a minute.  I supposed it one of the maids, and I cried—‘Have done!  How dare you show your giddiness here; What would Mr. Linton say if he heard you?’

‘Excuse me!’ answered a familiar voice; ‘but I know Edgar is in bed, and I cannot stop myself.’

With that the speaker came forward to the fire, panting and holding her hand to her side.

‘I have run the whole way from Wuthering Heights!’ she continued, after a pause; ‘except where I’ve flown.  I couldn’t count the number of falls I’ve had.  Oh, I’m aching all over!  Don’t be alarmed!  There shall be an explanation as soon as I can give it; only just have the goodness to step out and order the carriage to take me on to Gimmerton, and tell a servant to seek up a few clothes in my wardrobe.’

The intruder was Mrs. Heathcliff.  She certainly seemed in no laughing predicament: her hair streamed on her shoulders, dripping with snow and water; she was dressed in the girlish dress she commonly wore, befitting her age more than her position: a low frock with short sleeves, and nothing on either head or neck.  The frock was of light silk, and clung to her with wet, and her feet were protected merely by thin slippers; add to this a deep cut under one ear, which only the cold prevented from bleeding profusely, a white face scratched and bruised, and a frame hardly able to support itself through fatigue; and you may fancy my first fright was not much allayed when I had had leisure to examine her.

‘My dear young lady,’ I exclaimed, ‘I’ll stir nowhere, and hear nothing, till you have removed every article of your clothes, and put on dry things; and certainly you shall not go to Gimmerton to-night, so it is needless to order the carriage.’

‘Certainly I shall,’ she said; ‘walking or riding: yet I’ve no objection to dress myself decently.  And—ah, see how it flows down my neck now!  The fire does make it smart.’

She insisted on my fulfilling her directions, before she would let me touch her; and not till after the coachman had been instructed to get ready, and a maid set to pack up some necessary attire, did I obtain her consent for binding the wound and helping to change her garments.

‘Now, Ellen,’ she said, when my task was finished and she was seated in an easy-chair on the hearth, with a cup of tea before her, ‘you sit down opposite me, and put poor Catherine’s baby away: I don’t like to see it!  You mustn’t think I care little for Catherine, because I behaved so foolishly on entering: I’ve cried, too, bitterly—yes, more than any one else has reason to cry.  We parted unreconciled, you remember, and I sha’n’t forgive myself.  But, for all that, I was not going to sympathise with him—the brute beast!  Oh, give me the poker!  This is the last thing of his I have about me:’ she slipped the gold ring from her third finger, and threw it on the floor.  ‘I’ll smash it!’ she continued, striking it with childish spite, ‘and then I’ll burn it!’ and she took and dropped the misused article among the coals.  ‘There! he shall buy another, if he gets me back again.  He’d be capable of coming to seek me, to tease Edgar.  I dare not stay, lest that notion should possess his wicked head!  And besides, Edgar has not been kind, has he?  And I won’t come suing for his assistance; nor will I bring him into more trouble.  Necessity compelled me to seek shelter here; though, if I had not learned he was out of the way, I’d have halted at the kitchen, washed my face, warmed myself, got you to bring what I wanted, and departed again to anywhere out of the reach of my accursed—of that incarnate goblin!  Ah, he was in such a fury!  If he had caught me!  It’s a pity Earnshaw is not his match in strength: I wouldn’t have run till I’d seen him all but demolished, had Hindley been able to do it!’