Chapter 52

The change comes

01 For some days after that evening, Mr Heathcliff avoided meeting us at meals, yet he would not agree to allow Hareton and Cathy to eat elsewhere. He had a dislike to yielding so completely to his feelings, preferring rather to be absent himself, and taking food about once in twenty-four hours.

02 One night, after the family were in bed, I heard him go downstairs and out at the front door. In the morning he was still away. It was April then, the weather was sweet and warm, the grass green, and the two apple trees on the southern wall in full flower. Cathy insisted that I should bring a chair and do my work outside, and she persuaded Hareton to dig and arrange her little garden, now moved to this corner to satisfy Joseph. I was enjoying the blue sky and the warm sun, when my young lady, who had run down near the gate to get some flower roots for a border, returned and informed us that Mr Heathcliff was coming in.

03 'And he spoke to me,' she said, with a puzzled face. 'He told me to get away as fast as I could. But he looked so different that I stopped for a moment to stare at him.'

04 'How?' asked Hareton.

05 'Why, almost bright and cheerful—no, more than that—very much excited, and wild, and glad!'

06 I made an excuse to go in. Heathcliff stood at the open door. He was pale, and he trembled, yet he had a strange joyful light in his eyes.

07 'Will you have some breakfast?' I said. 'You must be hungry.'

08 'No, I'm not hungry,' he answered, rather scornfully.

09 'I don't think it right to wander out of doors at night. It isn't wise, at any rate, in this damp season. You'll catch a bad cold.'

10 'Nothing that I can't bear.'

11 I noticed that he breathed as fast as a cat.

12 That midday, he sat down to dinner with us, and received a heaped-up plate from my hands. He took his knife and fork, and was going to begin, when he suddenly laid them on the table, looked eagerly towards the window, then rose and went out. We saw him walking in the garden, and soon Hareton said he would go and ask him why he would not dine. He thought we had upset him in some way.

13 'Well, is he coming?' cried Cathy, when her cousin returned.

14 'No, but he's not angry. He told me to be off to you, and wondered how I could want the company of anybody else.'

15 I set his plate to keep warm by the fire. After an hour or two he re-entered, the same unnatural appearance of joy under his dark forehead, the same bloodless colour, and his teeth showing now and then, in a kind of smile, his body shivering, not as one shivers from cold and weakness, but as a tight-stretched string trembles at a touch.

16 'Have you heard any good news lately, Mr Heathcliff?' I exclaimed. 'You look uncommonly excited.'

17 'Where should good news come from to me? And Nelly, once and for all, let me beg you to warn Hareton and the other one to keep away from me. I wish to have this place to myself.'

18 'Tell me why you are so strange, Mr Heathcliff!'

19 'I'll tell you. Last night, I was on the edge of torment. Today, I am within sight of my heaven. I have my eyes on it. Scarcely three feet separate me from it! And now you'd better go.'

20 I took away his uneaten dinner, more puzzled than ever.

21 He did not leave the house again, and at eight o'clock I thought I had better carry a candle and supper to him.

22 He was leaning against the edge of an open window. The fire had burnt to ashes, and the room was filled with the damp mild air, so still that the murmur of the stream down at Gimmerton could be heard. I began shutting the windows, one after another, until I came to him.

23 'Must I close this?' I asked, in order to draw his attention.

24 The light flashed on his face as I spoke. What a terrible shock I got! Those deep black eyes, that smile, that deathly paleness! It appeared to me, not Mr Heathcliff, but an evil spirit, and in my terror, I let the candle bend towards the wall, and it left me in darkness.

25 'Yes, close it,' he said, in his familiar voice. 'There, that is pure awkwardness. Be quick, and bring another candle.'

26 I hurried out in a foolish state of fear, and told Joseph to take a light. He went, and came back immediately with the supper in his hand, explaining that the master was going to bed, and would not eat till morning.

27 We heard him go upstairs directly. He did not enter his ordinary room, but turned into that with the big closed-in wooden bed, where Catherine Earnshaw used to sleep.

28 It was a troubled night for me. In my mind I went over and over the strange life and nature of Heathcliff, remembering how I had looked after him as a child, and watched him grow up.

29 'But where did he come from, the little dark thing, sheltered by a good man to the ruin of his family?' I asked myself. And I began, half dreaming, to weary myself by imagining some suitable parents for him.