and have a scamper on the moors, where he can practice the deadly arts he is secretly acquiring.
I suppose Catherine fulfilled her project, for the next sentence took up another subject.
How little did I dream that Hindley would ever make me cry so! she wrote. My head aches, till I cannot keep it on the pillow, and still I can’t give over. Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond and won’t let him sit with us, nor eat with us anymore. He says he and I must not play together. Most tragic of all, he has forbidden Heathcliff to practice the skills necessary to fight the vampires running rampant on the moors. My brother threatens to turn him out of the house if we break his orders.
He has been blaming our father (how dared he?) for treating H. too liberally, and he swears he will reduce him to his right place.
I began to nod drowsily over the dim page, hearing the sound of a branch of a fir tree touch my window as the blast wailed by and rattled against the panes. I listened an instant, detected the disturber, then turned and dozed, and dreamt.
I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, only it was now a silk-lined casket, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind and the driving of the snow. I heard, also, the fir bough repeat its teasing sound, but it annoyed me so much that I resolved to silence it. I rose from my grave and endeavored to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple, a circumstance observed by me when awake, but forgotten.
“I must stop it, nevertheless!” I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass and stretching an arm out to seize the branch, instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!
The intense horror of nightmare came over me. I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed—
“Let me in—let me in!”
“Who are you?” I asked, struggling to disengage myself.
“Catherine Linton,” it replied shiveringly. “I’m come home. I’d lost my way on the moor and been chased by the bloodthirsty devils!”
As it spoke, I discerned a child’s pale face, her neck punctured and bleeding freely, staring through the window. Terror made me cruel, and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist onto the broken pane and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes. Still it wailed, “Let me in!” and maintained its tenacious grip. Horror gripped me at the icy touch of the unholy thing!
“How can I!” I said. “You must let me go, if you want me to let you in!”
The fingers relaxed, I snatched mine through the hole, hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramid against it, and stopped my ears to exclude the lamentable prayer.
I seemed to keep them closed above a quarter of an hour; yet, the instant I listened again, there was the doleful cry moaning on!
“Begone!” I shouted. “I’ll never let you in, not if you beg for twenty years.”
“It is twenty years,” mourned the voice. “Twenty years. I’ve been a fed-upon for twenty years! Dead but not dead.”
The feeble scratching outside began anew, and the pile of books moved as if thrust forward.
I tried to jump up, but could not stir a limb in the tight confines of my death chamber, and so I yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright.
To my confusion, I discovered the yell was not ideal. Hasty footsteps approached my chamber door; somebody pushed it open with a vigorous hand, and a light pierced the top of my coffin, which had transformed into a bed again. I sat shuddering and wiping the perspiration from my forehead. The intruder appeared to hesitate, and muttered to himself.
At last he said in a half-whisper, plainly not expecting an answer, “Is anyone here?”
I opened the panels to confess my presence, and I shall not soon forget the effect my action produced.
Heathcliff stood near the entrance, in his shirt and trousers, with a candle dripping over his fingers, and his face as white as the wall behind him. The first creak of the oak startled him like an electric shock: the light leapt from his hold to a distance of some feet, and his agitation was so extreme that he could hardly pick it up.
“It is only your guest, sir. I had the misfortune to scream in my sleep, owing to a frightful nightmare. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
He blinked and seemed to fall from his trance. “God confound you, Mr. Lockwood! Who showed you up to this room?” he demanded, crushing his nails into his palms and grinding his teeth. “Who was it? I’ve a good mind to turn them out of the house this moment!”
“It was your servant, Zillah,” I replied, flinging myself out of the bed and pulling on my coat. “I should not care if you did, Mr. Heathcliff; she richly deserves it. I suppose that she wanted to get another proof that the place was haunted, at my expense. Well, it is—swarming with ghosts and goblins! You have reason in shutting it up, I assure you!”
“What do you mean?” asked Heathcliff. “And what are you doing? Lie down and finish out the night, since you are here. But for heaven’s sake, don’t repeat that horrid noise. Nothing could excuse it, unless you were having your arteries sapped!”
“If the little fiend had got in at the window, she probably would have bitten me!” I returned. “I’m not going to endure the persecutions of your hospitable ancestors again. That minx, Catherine Linton, or Earnshaw, or however she was called—she must have been a changeling—human turned vampire—wicked little soul! She told me she had been walking the earth these twenty years, a just punishment for her mortal transgressions, I’ve no doubt!”
Scarcely were these words uttered, when I recollected the association of Heathcliff’s with Catherine’s name in the book, which had completely slipped from my memory. I blushed at my inconsideration, but, without showing further consciousness of the offense, I hastened to add—
“The truth is, sir, I passed the first part of the night in spelling over the name scratched on that window ledge. A monotonous occupation, calculated to set me asleep, like counting or—”
“What can you mean by talking this way to me?” thundered Heathcliff with savage vehemence. “How—how dare you, under my roof?” And he struck his forehead with rage.
I did not know whether to resent this language or pursue my explanation, but he seemed so powerfully affected that I proceeded with my re-telling of my dream.
Heathcliff gradually fell back into the shelter of the bed as I spoke, finally sitting down almost concealed behind it. I guessed, however, by his irregular and intercepted breathing that he struggled to vanquish an excess of violent emotion.
“Not three o’clock yet!” I remarked, continuing to dress. I was unsure of where I was going, but quite sure I would not stay there. “I could have taken oath it had been six. Time stagnates here; we must surely have retired to rest at eight!”
“Always at nine in the winter, and always rising at four,” said my host, suppressing a groan. “Mr. Lockwood,” he added. “You may go into my room. You’ll only be in the way, coming downstairs so early, and your childish outcry has sent sleep to the devil for me.”
“And for me, too,” I replied. “I’ll walk in the hall till daylight, and then I’ll be off. I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”
“Take the candle, and go where you please, then,” Heathcliff muttered. “I’ll join you directly. Keep out of the yard, though. The dogs are unchained to keep back the uninvited.”
I obeyed, leaving the chamber, but unsure as to which way to go, I turned back and found myself an involuntary witness to the rather strange behavior of my landlord.
Thinking himself alone, no doubt, he got onto the bed and wrenched open the lattice, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an