#the lattimore translation renders it 'his mother bore him to be wretched' (III.95) which was the original idea i had in mind but i wanted

[bridonebrere]

Here it is! it's just a small thing but it's honest work, and i really appreciate everyone's interest <3 i'd also love anyone's thoughts if you have them!

(putting it under a read-more because uploading a file is too complicated lol)

Wuthering Heights II.18(.5)

Wuthering Heights, Volume II, Chapter 18:

… I was summoned to Wuthering Heights, within a fortnight of your leaving us, she said; and I obeyed joyfully, for Catherine’s sake. 

My first interview with her grieved and shocked me! She had altered so much since our separation. Her eyes, dark and pretty like her mother’s, still, had sunken into the skull; her frame, ever light and lithe, seemed wasted to my eyes who had seen her in bloom. She longed for open air, but locked the windows, shunned them, and rained wrath on any who dared draw near. 

I had only been a few days at the Heights when I ventured to let in the light, and a breeze from the first clear sky of Spring. It was a marvelous day: birdsong floated in with the bells from the kirk, and the smell of thyme, and the purple heather. Yet hardly had I reached the latch when a thin, blueish hand struck mine on the sill!

“Begone, witch!” Catherine cried, and shocked me to silence: it was twenty years since I had seen such a frenzied face. But I gathered myself, and scolded her: 

“For shame, Miss Cathy—are you so easily swayed by the disposition of the house? You’ll live up to your name yet, carrying on so.” 

But the little thing was already white as a ghost, as if she hardly believed what she had done, and uttered: she rushed toward me and clasped my hand in hers, endeavoring to kiss away the red print she had left. 

“Forgive me, forgive me, Ellen! —I was not myself.”

I pulled away: although my heart was softened, I had no mind to submit to her entreaties so easily. 

“It was a wicked thing, Miss Catherine,” I said, nursing my wound, “very wicked; if I were a little older, you might have hurt me truly, and sent me back to the Grange; I doubt if Master Heathcliff would let me stay to recover, eating his food without keeping his house. He is a hard man.”

“He is harder than you know, Ellen; he is waiting to kill me; he’s a villain, a fiend!” Catherine wept on her knees, clutching at my clothes and blotting them with tears. “Forgive me, I beg you. Don’t be hard, like he is.”

I glanced at the door. It was a Sunday: Joseph had gone to chapel; Hareton, hunting; Heathcliff was not at home. I sat Catherine in a chair.

“He is a villain,” I agreed, “but it is enough for him that you should suffer, imprisoned; he would as soon kill me as you.” 

“No, Ellen, he has said so,” she insisted through tears; “—that he would prefer me dead and buried under Joseph’s currants than to set a single foot beyond the garden; I thought he threatened idly, as he threatened his coward son, and I used to mock him for it. But as long as I live, I shall never forget his ghastly face—that month or more after Linton died!

“A widow, and Heathcliff’s charge no longer, I sought escape; it came in the shape of a storm from the North, that came on swiftly and caught the men off-guard. Joseph and Hareton made for the barn, but the latter failed to shut the door: it swung open and closed in the thrashing wind. The two disappeared and I fled, with nothing but the clothes on my back. By the time I approached the gate they were soaked through and heavy; they tangled as I struggled to climb over. I was about to shed them and thus flee to the Grange—don’t look like that, Ellen; would you judge a fawn stumbling from the hunter on shaky legs? —when I saw the man on the top of the hill.

“Not a man. A demon: his long, black hair dripped in his eyes, and his unbuttoned coat, heavy with water, spread in the wind like the wings of a bat. He held his gun in his hands. A lightning bolt revealed his face. His eyes fixed me; his fingers flexed; and I knew, and he knew, if I stayed still a moment more he would cut me down and take my soul to the Devil…  

“I came down from the fence—my skirts tore, and left scraps in the pickets—and I made for the Heights. Hareton watched me, dumbfounded, holding the door half open. But only half; I was sure it would close, and leave me to die. ‘Let me through—let me through, you dunce!’ I cried, and shoved him so hard he fell back in the mud, cursing to Heaven. I dared not hide in my room (it has no lock), so I tried the forbidden door: it yielded, to my great surprise; I locked it and wedged a chair beneath the handle. The room was utterly dark and very cold and bare: a clothes-press in one corner, a closet in the other. I hid myself within, on some couch or a bed, listening for Heathcliff’s tread on the stairs, and stifling my chattering teeth, and the urge to cry. I spent an hour thus, before leaning my head on the windowsill—how it throbbed with every crack of thunder—and pooling my tears on its flaking paint. The place smelled of mildew; my whole body trembled as my clothes seeped water into the cushions; the flashes of light dazed my eyes, until I noted something like nail-scratches in the ancient wood. With a few more flashes and sickening claps I made out: Catherine Earnshaw; Catherine Linton; Catherine Heathcliff.

“I should have stopped reading at once, but I was not myself; I am banished from my father’s house, but my mother’s room! –This was her bed, surely, and the scratches from her nails. I reached for the top of a stack of damp books, seeking more of her hand; I read through to the bottom. What an ill-temper she had. I understood, suddenly, Hareton’s relation. I even grew weary of her accounts: sinking her brother’s clothes in spoiled milk; the horrible names they called his wife; the blasphemies Joseph wrung from them; and always, him! the author of all my sorrows. But I supposed she was young—younger than the woman Papa made his wife. He could never have loved her otherwise, being so good himself, the best man who ever lived…” Now, Mr. Lockwood, she wept anew, having just begun to compose herself. Relieved, she continued: “I finished the last book, for I felt a fever coming on, but as I closed it a loose leaf fell onto my knee. It was scrawled in a finer hand, if not a finer style, and had no address; but, thinking at first it was a love note to Papa, I read on:

“‘I go to the Grange tomorrow. The Grange! Its sweet-smelling trees, its little meadows. Isabella frets constantly about the house, so that not a single doghair might displease me. I laugh at her for it: she’s not used to such exertion and goes red in the face, ugly next to her flaxen curls. She’s pretty otherwise; why ruin herself to please me? She’s a queer creature. And Edgar—who ever loved anyone the way Edgar loves me? He loves, and Hindley fears me; not even Nelly dares refuse me. And yet I suffer… Three years—can it be, really? And nothing so much as a nod from you—much less an address. That was the cruelest, wickedest thing you’ve ever done; you’ve killed me, disappearing; I hope it torments you all your life! … I hope sometimes that you’re dead in the street, forgotten, reviled, bled dry and dirty as the day Papa dragged you from the slops. Is that what you wanted? –But I know it’s not so: you breathe yet, to afflict some other corner. They must kick you like a dog, and you must bite their heels; above all, you mustn’t blame me. You’ve no right to: I’ve chosen to rule in Heaven; you’ve chosen to serve in Hell—else you were but born to try the lot of man… But what of it? Suffer as I suffer; die as I die; you will not, I declare, until I myself release you.

“‘I dreamed, once, that I fell from Heaven. But I landed—not in Pandaemonium, but in the purple heath on the Heights; it embraced me sweeter than Edgar ever will. I cannot, I will not, stoop so low as Hell for you, and you shall never lay eyes on Heaven; yet I am no angel, and you are no devil. Meet me again in the soft earth, and no man shall put asunder; but I shall rule you, and you me; one flesh; one flame; one name—Heathcliff! Heathcliff! Heathcliff!’

“If she wrote more, I couldn’t read it: so violently my hands trembled, so blurred was my sight; my face burned while my heart wheezed—it ached, as beneath a millstone—and I struggled to breathe as if the fiend’s own hand had curled around my throat. I thought no more of the cold, being all on fire, each moment imagining footsteps at the door, or a hand on the window—the wind knocked the boughs frightfully against the panes. I thought I would die in that closet and decay, undiscovered by a house that wishes I never was born, or else beaten to death by Heathcliff’s hands, buried in the bushes, still bearing his bruises. And all the while, that infernal knocking.

“‘Go away,’ I whispered. Still, it thundered. Some spirit came over me; it straightened me and flung the book at the window. ‘Away!’

“It didn’t crack the glass, but warped the frame, so that a small space opened between it and the wooden sill. Rain leaked through. As I struggled to pull it down I saw a face, my face: my reflection, surely, with wet hair and black eyes. But it—or I—opened its mouth, and spoke!

“‘Let me in,’ it moaned. ‘Let me in, I beg you—it is freezing here, and I shall die.’

“‘Go, then!’ I cried, and finally slammed the frame down. The reflection wailed: thin, blue fingers were wedged in the gap!

“‘I did wrong,’ it whined, ‘I did wrong to leave! Only let me come home!—’ I seized the book at the word and slammed it down on those monstrous fingers, again and again as if to grind them to dust—the whole time it bawled like some cast-out child. You are hard! it squalled; Hard! Why should you turn me away? But I drowned out its cries: ‘Begone, oh, begone! You’re a witch—a witch—a devil—a fiend—! …’ The paint chipped off and stuck in my eyes; I struck harder and harder till a crack split the air. The book had broken clean in two, and the door had burst open; the chair went clattering; I crumpled, and knocked my head on the sill…

“When I awoke, it was day, and my clothes were dry; I was in my own room, and Kenneth loomed over. The clouds hung so thick, it was a poor, grey light that wheezed into the room to show me his face. He examined me: I’d slept three days and three nights, grown a wicked welt on my temple, and sweated through a fever. I spoke little, but he declared me out of danger, and I decided I had dreamed the entire thing… Moreover, if someone in the house had sent for Kenneth, I doubted that Heathcliff would make good on his promise that day or the next. Life returned to normal, that is to say, I resumed a sentence unbecoming for human beings; for Wuthering Heights is become an abode of ghouls.

“The next months I spent as quietly as possible, suffering pangs now and again (you would not believe what a ruckus that stranger caused in the house!) until last Christmas. No one acknowledged it; they celebrate nothing here; Zillah did not make up the house, did not even bake, but we all dined on thin porridge and water. Hareton tried to hand me a lump of sugar, like he gives to the horses—he ignores me, or treats me like an animal; how dare he? I crumpled it in my fist and tossed it on the ground. He went red to the ears. He’s forever half-scarlet; it makes him look silly. But he left me alone after that, and Zillah shunned me, as always, and Joseph locked himself up in prayer, so I settled here—in this chair—to mend my torn dress. For weeks it made me sick to touch it; a monstrous weakness, I decided, and finally sewed by the light of the fire. I was not quite finished when I felt a lump, hard and wadded, in my pocket lining. I retrieved it, smoothed it, and revealed the letter, and the old weight on my chest. It was so wrinkled and smudged, no one else would recognize it; to me, it was unmistakable.

“At once, my face burned, my heart raced, my head throbbed at the recollection; it fell to the ground as I walked to the window, intending to let in the bitter, chill wind. I pulled the curtain aside and peered into the night, and met, once again, my face in the glass. A reflection, surely. A reflection—mine—with the only light at my back, and the whole pane steeped in darkness?

“I lept away—the face did not move—snatched the letter off the ground and cast it into the flames. As it glowed and curled and flaked away, I imagined I heard a hoarse cry, like that of a bird shot mid-air, plummeting to earth. When I looked back to the window, the specter had vanished. No human, I deemed, could have made such a noise; but what bird would have shrieked so, and so close to the house?

“You must swear yourself to secrecy, Ellen: if he finds out, if he doesn’t kill me, might he send me straight to Bedlam? —Oh, worse than death! But tell me, please, my last and only friend in the world: have I gone mad?”

I confessed I didn’t know, but Wuthering Heights has always had queer goings-on: strong hands and long memories. She and Hareton, besides, are the last of its old stock. You cannot imagine my joy—but then, sir, I am getting ahead of myself…

***

Thank you to anyone who read this far!

maybe this isn't what anyone's here for, but I've been working on a creative writing assignment for my gothic lit class - I went with a Wuthering Heights missing chapter in which Catherine Heathcliff has an encounter much like Lockwood's with her mother's apparition, with some inspiration from the Jane Eyre red room episode. It'll be done by tomorrow night (when it's due lol) and would anyone read/want to read if I posted it? it's nothing spectacular but I've been having fun with it and maybe there are some wuthering heights heads out here