Грозовой перевал / Wuthering Heights

«Don’t be scared, Nelly, it’s only me!» she panted, «I’ve run all the way from Wuthering Heights, and I can’t count the number of falls I’ve had. Oh, I’m aching all over, but I can’t stay. I just need to collect a few clothes and then take a carriage on to Gimmerton.»

Her hair and clothes were dripping wet[69], and all she was wearing was a short-sleeved dress and a thin pair of shoes. She had a deep cut under one ear, and her face was covered in scratches and bruises. I also noticed that she was expecting a baby.

«My dear young lady,» I exclaimed, «you must at least get warm and dry and let me bandage your wound, before you go any further.»

She agreed to rest by the fire for a few minutes and, while I was looking after her, she told me her sad story…

«I daren’t stay long,» she began, «or Heathcliff will find me and force me to go back to the Heights. He was in such a fury when I left! I wish I could stay to comfort Edgar and help you with the baby, but Heathcliff would never allow it. He hates me with a passion and he loves to make me suffer. I can’t believe I ever liked him. How could Cathy have loved such a monster?»

«Hush! He’s a human being,» I said. «There are worse men than him!»

«He’s not a human being,» she replied, «he’s a fiend! And I can’t feel sorry for him now, not if he wept tears of blood for Cathy. But you ask me why I left…

«Yesterday, you know, was the day of Cathy’s funeral, and Heathcliff came back after six days away, looking like a savage wolf with his cannibal teeth gleaming in the dark. That night, Hindley tried to shoot Heathcliff with his rifle, and he would have succeeded if only Heathcliff hadn’t been so strong. Heathcliff didn’t stop beating Hindley until he was black and blue, and I just watched it all and wished I had the strength to overpower the brute myself.

«The next morning I decided it was time for my revenge. I waited until Hindley was prowling around the house, ready to pay Heathcliff back for the night before. Then I began to torment my husband in the best way I knew – by telling him that he could never have made Cathy happy! This made him so wild that he threw a knife at me, which cut me in the neck, and I ran screaming out of the kitchen. Hindley heard the scream and leaped on Heathcliff. Then I left them fighting like bears and ran all the way here!»

Isabella stopped her story. The carriage had arrived to take her to Gimmerton and she was anxious to be gone. Before she left, she kissed Edgar’s and Cathy’s portraits, and scooped her little dog up into her arms.

I believe she settled somewhere near London, and a few months later she had a son. She and Edgar wrote to each other regularly, but Isabella never came to Yorkshire again.

Somehow, Heathcliff learned from the servants about his son. Once, when I saw him in the village, he stopped and spoke to me.

«I hear Isabella’s called my son Linton. She must want me to hate him too!»

«I don’t think she wants you to know anything about him,» I replied frostily.

«Well, she can keep him now,» he said grimly. «But one day I’ll have him, she can be sure of that!»

After Cathy’s death, my master was a changed man. He almost never left the Grange except to visit Cathy’s grave. But he did have one great comfort in life – his little daughter Catherine. Hesoon stopped neglecting her and became immensely fond of the child[70], spending most of his days playing and talking with her.

I sometimes used to compare Edgar with Hindley, and wonder to myself how these two men could have turned out so differently. Both of them had lost a wife they adored and both had a child to care for. But Hindley, who had always seemed the stronger of the two to me, allowed himself to fall apart, while Edgar devoted himself to being a good father.

Poor Hindley died soon after his sister. We never found out exactly what happened to him, but the doctor said he had drunk himself to death[71]. By the time Hindley died, he had nothing to leave to his son. Heathcliff had won his house and all his money by playing him at cards. And young Hareton, who should have inherited Wuthering Heights, was forced to work as a servant for his father’s enemy. The cuckoo had finally taken over the nest.

Catherine and her Cousins

The next twelve years were the happiest of my life. Young Catherine was such a lively, affectionate little girl that no one close to her could stay sad for long. She was a beautiful child, with the Earnshaws’ dark eyes and the Lintons’ delicate features and golden hair. I have to admit that she had her faults – she had inherited her mother’s temper, and hated being contradicted, but she was so loveable that we almost always allowed her to have her own way