Chapter 25

Meeting

01 That evening I knew, as well as if I saw him, that Mr Heathcliff was about the Grange, and I avoided going outside, because I still carried his letter in my pocket. Until my master went somewhere, I did not want to give it, because I could not guess how it would affect my mistress. It did not reach her, therefore, till three days had passed.

02 The fourth was Sunday, and I brought it into her room after the household had gone to church.

03 Catherine sat in a loose white dress, at the open window as usual. Her long, thick hair, partly removed during her illness, was simply combed over her forehead and neck. Her appearance was changed, but when she was calm, there seemed a strange beauty in the change. The flash in her eyes had given place to a dreamy softness. The paleness of her face, and the peculiar expression arising from her state of mind, added to the interest she awakened, but, to me, were unmistakable signs that her fate was an early death.

04 Gimmerton church bells were still ringing, and the full flow of the little stream in the valley came sweetly to the ear. Catherine seemed to be listening, but she had the dreamy, distant look that I have mentioned.

05 'There's a letter for you, Mrs Linton,' I said, gently placing it in her hand. 'You must read it immediately, because it needs an answer. Shall I open it?'

06 'Yes,' she answered, without changing the direction of her eyes.

07 I did so, and gave it to her to read. She drew away her hand and let it fall.

08 I replaced it on her knee, and stood waiting.

09 At last I said, 'Must I read it? It is from Mr Heathcliff.'

10 There was a sudden movement, and a troubled flash of remembrance, and a struggle to arrange her ideas. She lifted the letter, and seemed to read it, and when she came to the name at the end, she drew in her breath: yet still I found she had not grasped its meaning. She pointed to the name, and fixed her eyes on me with sad and questioning eagerness.

11 'He wishes to see you,' I said. 'He's probably in the garden by this time, and impatient to know your answer.'

12 As I spoke, I noticed a large dog, lying on the sunny grass below, raise its ears, and then smoothing them back, show, by a movement of the tail, that someone approached whom it did not consider a stranger. Mrs Linton bent forward and listened breathlessly.

13 The minute after, a step was heard in the hall. With indescribable eagerness Catherine directed her eyes towards the entrance to her room. Before I could reach the door, Heathcliff had found it, and in a moment was at her side, and had her in his arms.

14 He neither spoke nor loosed his hold for several minutes. I saw he could hardly bear, for pure despair, to look into her face! He felt, from the instant he saw her, that there was no hope that she would recover. Her fate was decided; she was sure to die.

15 'Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! How can I bear it?' was the first sentence he spoke. And now he looked at her so earnestly that I thought it would bring tears to his eyes; but they burned with pain, they did not melt.

16 'What now?' said Catherine, leaning back, and returning his look with one of sudden anger. 'You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff! And now you both come to cry pity on the deed, as if you were the people in need of sympathy! I shall not pity you, not I. You have killed me—and are all the stronger for it, I think. How many years do you mean to live after I am gone?'

17 Heathcliff had knelt on one knee. He attempted to rise, but she seized his hair, and kept him down.

18 'I wish I could hold you,' she continued bitterly, 'till we were both dead! I shouldn't care what you suffered. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth?'

19 'Don't torment me till I'm as mad as yourself!' he cried, forcing his head free. 'Are you possessed by a devil, to talk like that when you are dying? Do you realize that all those words will be burnt into my memory? You know it is not true that I have killed you: and Catherine, you know that I could as soon forget you as my own existence! Is it not enough for your cursed selfishness, that while you are at peace, I shall be in torment?'

20 'I shall not be at peace,' murmured Catherine, brought back to a sense of weakness by the violent uneven beating of her heart. She said no more till the attack was over, then she continued, more kindly:

21 'I'm not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted: and if the memory of any word of mine should give you pain in the future, think that I feel the same pain beneath the earth, and for my sake, forgive me! Come here and kneel down again! You have never harmed me in your life.'