Ivy lore!! Ivy were abused by her mother when she was 6 yrs old. Her mother start dating when she was 16 yrs old , and get pregnant at 17 leading her parent to kick her out of the house , so she live in her boyfriend ( later get marry ) house , she also get abuse by her boyfriend when she 18 and she give birth to Ivy at 19 yrs old . Her mother was also get abuse by her husband which leads them to get divorced Ivy mother went smoking a lot and abuse Ivy like a stress toy Ivy have to cut her hair because her mother don’t like it , also Ivy get cut by her mother by scissors so that’s why Ivy hate / scare of scissors After Ivy mom and her husband get divorced, her mom mental health went down by her smoking , and they have no food to eat because of their House debts and Ivy mom doesn’t have a job . Ivy mom find a new guy and marry him after ( she marry him because he was rich ) Later Ivy mom become rich and want Ivy to become a ballet dancer If Ivy does something wrong she’ll yell at her and hit her with a ruler or cut her hair or hands . Ivy POV Past Ivy everyday have to see her parents screaming at each other And one day she sees the divorce paper on the table and she went crying knowing her parents will get divorced After the divorce, Ivy family was poor , no food , no money , just a bunch of cigarettes of her mom keep buying . Ivy was abuse by her mother everyday, Ivy mom would like to kick or cut her But Ivy know that her mother was get abuse by her dad too so she just kind of “ok I deserve this” After many years Ivy mom marry a wealthy man They were rich , they would never starved again Ivy new dad treated her not that good He’s very strict, also a p3do Ivy had many traumas cause of her parent and her new dad Ivy had ADHD , she didn’t learn fast like other classmates ( she also didn’t go to school for a while due to her mother debt and no money ) Ivy also has autism Cause she have no friend, when she was younger everybody told she is a freak because of her abuse mother and her messy hair.
101 Riddles For Kids and Adults to See Just How Smart You Really Are
From easy riddles to hard ones, give it your best shot.
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Need a little break to unwind with some fun brain teasers? Check out our ultimate list of the best riddles of all time.
They start off easy, and some are perfect riddles for kids. Others, however, are hard and may require you to be a math whiz. Many are plays on letters and words, so keep going if you’re undeterred. We even threw in some funny riddles to keep you going. Now, if you make it toward the end, you can try the rest, but beware: The hard riddles for adults will put you to the test!
10 New Trader Joe’s Finds That Just Dropped This June
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Easy Riddles
1. Riddle: What has to be broken before you can use it? Answer: An egg
2. Riddle: I’m tall when I’m young, and I’m short when I’m old. What am I? Answer: A candle
3. Riddle: What month of the year has 28 days? Answer: All of them
4. Riddle: What is full of holes but still holds water? Answer: A sponge
5. Riddle: What question can you never answer yes to? Answer: Are you asleep yet?
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6. Riddle: What is always in front of you but can’t be seen? Answer: The future
7. Riddle: There’s a one-story house in which everything is yellow. Yellow walls, yellow doors, yellow furniture. What color are the stairs? Answer: There aren’t any—it’s a one-story house.
8. Riddle. What can you break, even if you never pick it up or touch it? Answer: A promise
9. Riddle: What goes up but never comes down? Answer: Your age
10. Riddle: A man who was outside in the rain without an umbrella or hat didn’t get a single hair on his head wet. Why? Answer: He was bald.
11. Riddle: What gets wet while drying? Answer: A towel
12. Riddle: What can you keep after giving to someone? Answer: Your word
13. Riddle: I shave every day, but my beard stays the same. What am I? Answer: A barber
14. Riddle: You see a boat filled with people, yet there isn’t a single person on board. How is that possible? Answer: All the people on the boat are married.
15. Riddle: You walk into a room that contains a match, a kerosene lamp, a candle and a fireplace. What would you light first? Answer: The match
16. Riddle: A man dies of old age on his 25 birthday. How is this possible? Answer: He was born on February 29.
17. Riddle: I have branches, but no fruit, trunk or leaves. What am I? Answer: A bank
18. Riddle: What can’t talk but will reply when spoken to? Answer: An echo
19. Riddle: The more of this there is, the less you see. What is it? Answer: Darkness
Riddles for Kids
20. Riddle: David’s parents have three sons: Snap, Crackle, and what’s the name of the third son? Answer: David
21. Riddle: I follow you all the time and copy your every move, but you can’t touch me or catch me. What am I? Answer: Your shadow
22. Riddle: What has many keys but can’t open a single lock? Answer: A piano
23. Riddle: What can you hold in your left hand but not in your right? Answer: Your right elbow
24. Riddle: What is black when it’s clean and white when it’s dirty? Answer: A chalkboard
25. Riddle: What gets bigger when more is taken away? Answer: A hole
26. Riddle: I’m light as a feather, yet the strongest person can’t hold me for five minutes. What am I? Answer: Your breath
27. Riddle: I’m found in socks, scarves and mittens; and often in the paws of playful kittens. What am I? Answer: Yarn
28. Riddle: Where does today come before yesterday? Answer: The dictionary
29. Riddle: What invention lets you look right through a wall? Answer: A window
30. Riddle: If you’ve got me, you want to share me; if you share me, you haven’t kept me. What am I? Answer: A secret
31. Riddle: What can’t be put in a saucepan? Answer: It’s lid
32. Riddle: What goes up and down but doesn’t move? Answer: A staircase
33. Riddle: If you’re running in a race and you pass the person in second place, what place are you in? Answer: Second place
34. Riddle: It belongs to you, but other people use it more than you do. What is it? Answer: Your name
58. Riddle: I am an odd number. Take away a letter and I become even. What number am I? Answer: Seven
59. Riddle: If two’s company, and three’s a crowd, what are four and five? Answer: Nine
60. Riddle: What three numbers, none of which is zero, give the same result whether they’re added or multiplied? Answer: One, two and three
61. Riddle: Mary has four daughters, and each of her daughters has a brother. How many children does Mary have? Answer: Five—each daughter has the same brother.
62. Riddle: Which is heavier: a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers? Answer: Neither—they both weigh a ton.
63. Riddle: Three doctors said that Bill was their brother. Bill says he has no brothers. How many brothers does Bill actually have? Answer: None. He has three sisters.
64. Riddle: Two fathers and two sons are in a car, yet there are only three people in the car. How? Answer: They are a grandfather, father and son.
65. Riddle: The day before yesterday I was 21, and next year I will be 24. When is my birthday? Answer:December 31; today is January 1.
66. Riddle: A little girl goes to the store and buys one dozen eggs. As she is going home, all but three break. How many eggs are left unbroken? Answer: Three
67. Riddle: A man describes his daughters, saying, “They are all blonde, but two; all brunette but two; and all redheaded but two.” How many daughters does he have? Answer: Three: A blonde, a brunette and a redhead
68. Riddle: If there are three apples and you take away two, how many apples do you have? Answer: You have two apples.
69. Riddle: A girl has as many brothers as sisters, but each brother has only half as many brothers as sisters. How many brothers and sisters are there in the family? Answer: Four sisters and three brothers
76. Riddle: I am the beginning of everything, the end of everywhere. I’m the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space. What am I? Answer: Also the letter “e”
77. Riddle: What 4-letter word can be written forward, backward or upside down, and can still be read from left to right? Answer: NOON
78. Riddle: Forward I am heavy, but backward I am not. What am I? Answer: The word “not”
79. Riddle: What is 3/7 chicken, 2/3 cat and 2/4 goat? Answer: Chicago
80. Riddle: I am a word of letters three; add two and fewer there will be. What word am I? Answer: Few
81. Riddle: What word of five letters has one left when two are removed? Answer: Stone
82. Riddle: What is the end of everything? Answer: The letter “g”
83. Riddle: What word is pronounced the same if you take away four of its five letters? Answer: Queue
84. Riddle: I am a word that begins with the letter “i.” If you add the letter “a” to me, I become a new word with a different meaning, but that sounds exactly the same. What word am I? Answer: Isle (add “a” to make “aisle”)
85. Riddle: What word in the English language does the following: The first two letters signify a male, the first three letters signify a female, the first four letters signify a great, while the entire world signifies a great woman. What is the word? Answer: Heroine
86. Riddle: What is so fragile that saying its name breaks it? Answer: Silence.
87. Riddle: What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a head but never weeps, has a bed but never sleeps? Answer: A river
88. Riddle: Speaking of rivers, a man calls his dog from the opposite side of the river. The dog crosses the river without getting wet, and without using a bridge or boat. How? Answer: The river was frozen.
89. Riddle: What can fill a room but takes up no space? Answer: Light
90. Riddle: If you drop me I’m sure to crack, but give me a smile and I’ll always smile back. What am I? Answer: A mirror
91. Riddle: The more you take, the more you leave behind. What are they? Answer: Footsteps
92. Riddle: I turn once, what is out will not get in. I turn again, what is in will not get out. What am I? Answer: A key
93. Riddle: People make me, save me, change me, raise me. What am I? Answer: Money
94. Riddle: What breaks yet never falls, and what falls yet never breaks? Answer: Day, and night
95. Riddle: What goes through cities and fields, but never moves? Answer: A road
96. Riddle: I am always hungry and will die if not fed, but whatever I touch will soon turn red. What am I? Answer: Fire
97. Riddle: The person who makes it has no need of it; the person who buys it has no use for it. The person who uses it can neither see nor feel it. What is it? Answer: A coffin
98. Riddle: A man looks at a painting in a museum and says, “Brothers and sisters I have none, but that man’s father is my father’s son.” Who is in the painting? Answer: The man’s son
99. Riddle: With pointed fangs I sit and wait; with piercing force I crunch out fate; grabbing victims, proclaiming might; physically joining with a single bite. What am I? Answer: A stapler
100. Riddle: I have lakes with no water, mountains with no stone and cities with no buildings. What am I? Answer: A map
101. Riddle: What does man love more than life, hate more than death or mortal strife; that which contented men desire; the poor have, the rich require; the miser spends, the spendthrift saves, and all men carry to their graves? Answer: Nothing
Story by Tina Donvito.
Need a Good Laugh? These 101 Funny Puns Will Get You Giggling All Day
Puns are undeniably cheesy at times, but sharing funny puns almost always leads to a good laugh—and in this day and time, we could all use more of that right now. Chances are, you’ve probably heard your share of funny puns before. But we’re upping the ante and taking our clever puns to the next level with this big list of the 101 best hilarious puns.
These 101 best funny puns are everything: bad puns, great puns, hilarious, stupid and just funny, short puns to get a good laugh!
101 Best Bad Funny Puns
1. Why did Adele cross the road? To say hello from the other side.
2. What kind of concert only costs 45 cents? A 50 Cent concert featuring Nickelback.
3. What did the grape say when it got crushed? Nothing, it just let out a little wine.
4. I want to be cremated as it is my last hope for a smoking hot body.
5. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
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6. To the guy who invented zero, thanks for nothing.
7. I had a crazy dream last night! I was swimming in an ocean of orange soda. Turns out it was just a Fanta sea.
8. A crazy wife says to her husband that moose are falling from the sky. The husband says, it’s reindeer.
9. Ladies, if he can’t appreciate your fruit jokes, you need to let that mango.
87. My parents said I can’t drink coffee anymore. Or else they’ll ground me!
88. What did syrup to the waffle? I love you a waffle lot!
89. My wife refuses to go to a nude beach with me. I think she’s just being clothes-minded!
90. Did you hear about that cheese factory that exploded in France? There was nothing left but de Brie!
91. I’m no cheetah, you’re lion!
92. What did the ranch say when somebody opened the refrigerator? “Hey, close the door! I’m dressing!”
93. I wanted to take pictures of the fog this morning but I mist my chance. I guess I could dew it tomorrow!
94. My dad unfortunately passed away when we couldn’t remember his blood type. His last words to us were, “Be positive!”
95. What do you call a girl with one leg that’s shorter than the other? Ilene.
96. Towels can’t tell jokes. They have a dry sense of humor.
97. What did the buffalo say to his son? Bison.
98. Why should you never trust a train? They have loco motives.
99. A cabbage and celery walk into a bar and the cabbage gets served first because he was a head.
100. What’s America’s favorite soda? Mini soda.
101. What does a clock do when it’s hungry? It goes back for seconds.
Easy Trick Questions
Get your brain in gear with these easy trick questions before moving on to the harder ones.
What has a thumb and four fingers but isn’t alive?
A glove
What can be broken but is never held?
A promise
What is something that you can catch that isn’t thrown?
A cold
If a plane crashes on the border between the United States and Canada, where do they bury the survivors?
Survivors aren’t buried.
A boy kicks his soccer ball ten feet, and comes back to him on its own. How is this possible?
He kicked it up in the air.
What has a head and a tail but no body?
A coin
What can travel around the world while staying in the same corner?
A stamp
What only has one foot, one head, and four legs?
A bed
How many letters are in the alphabet?
Eleven. T-h-e -a-l-p-h-a-b-e-t
How do you make the number one disappear?
Add the letter “g” to it, and it’s gone.
If two’s company and three’s a crowd, what do four and five make?
Nine
If you were running a race and passed the person in second place, what place would you be in now?
Second place
She has married many men but has never been married. Who is she?
The minister
Spell enemy in three letters.
Foe
Funny Trick Questions
Some of these funny trick questions are just as good as any dad joke!
A man went outside in the pouring rain without an umbrella. Not a single hair on his head got wet. How is this possible?
He’s bald.
What happened when the wheel was invented?
It caused a revolution.
Who is bigger: Mr. Bigger, Mrs. Bigger, or their baby?
The baby, because he’s a little Bigger.
What did one campfire say to the other?
Shall we go out tonight?
What is the biggest problem with snow boots?
They melt.
Where is an ocean with no water?
On a map.
What happens if you throw a white hat into the Black Sea?
The hat gets wet.
How can you lift an elephant with one hand?
You can’t. Elephants don’t have hands.
A man runs out of his home, yelling, “Help a thief!”. Instead of stopping the thief, his neighbor hands her car keys to the thief. Why?
The man didn’t use a comma.
How much dirt is there in a hole 3 feet deep, 6 feet long, and 4 feet wide?
None, there’s no dirt in a hole.
Why did the woman run around her bed at night?
To catch up on her sleep.
If a monkey, a squirrel, and a bird are racing to the top of a coconut tree, who will get the banana first?
None of them; you can’t get a banana from a coconut tree.
What two words, when combined, hold the most letters?
Post office
If a rooster lays an egg on top of the barn roof, which way will it roll?
Roosters don’t lay eggs.
Why do some fish prefer to stay at the bottom of the pond?
Because they dropped out of school
What happens if you make a wooden car with wooden wheels and a wooden engine?
It wooden move
Which button cannot be unbuttoned?
The belly–button
What is always on the ground but is never dirty or soiled?
A shadow
What do you say to water that gets evaporated?
You will be mist
Mind Trick Questions
These mind trick questions may leave you stumped, but don’t worry; we’ve included all the answers!
A man lives on the 100th floor of an apartment building. On rainy days he rides the elevator all the way up. However, on sunny days, he goes halfway and takes the stairs the rest of the way. Why?
The man is short and can only reach the button for the 50th floor on the elevator. On rainy days, he uses his umbrella handle.
A man dressed in all black is walking down a country lane. Suddenly, a large black car with no lights on comes around the corner and screeches to a halt. How did the car’s driver know he was there?
It was daytime.
Why are 1968 pennies worth more than 1967 pennies?
Because there is one more penny in 1968 pennies than in 1967 pennies.
You see a truck driver going the wrong way down a one-way street. He passes at least 10 police but doesn’t get stopped. Why?
The truck driver was walking, not driving.
You see two girls on the street who look identical. You ask them the following questions: Do you come from the same family? Do you share the same parents? Are your birthdays on the same day? Both girls answered yes to all your questions, but they said no when you asked if they were twins. How is that possible?
Because they aren’t twins, they are triplets.
Two security guards arrive for work at the same time in the morning. They have both guarded the same bank vault for the past 10 years. Neither of them ever takes a sick day, but they have never once laid eyes on each other. How is this possible?
They guard the vault on different days.
How can a man who shaves several times a day still sport a long beard?
He’s a barber.
If Brenna had four piles of sand and Sara had five piles of sand, and they put them all together, how many piles would there be?
One big pile.
It’s 7:00 AM. You are asleep, and there is a sudden knock on the door. Behind the door are your parents, who came to have breakfast. In your fridge are bread, milk, juice, and jam. Which will you open first?
The door! Your parents are waiting outside.
The Jones family started driving south for their summer vacation, going through five states.
The Bradfords drove in the opposite direction and only went through three states. What direction did they drive?
North
You’re riding an electric train at 120mph, moving north with the wind blowing east at 15 mph. Which way does the smoke blow?
Electric trains don’t smoke.
A woman ran away from home, turning left three times only to return home, where she came face to face with two guys wearing masks. Who were those guys?
The umpire and the catcher.
There are two things you can never eat at breakfast. What are they?
Lunch and dinner.
What five-letter word becomes smaller when you add two letters and even smaller when you add three?
Short
What’s the only word that grows when you add two letters to it?
Long
What building has more stories than any other building in the entire world?
The library
Trick Questions For Adults
Can a man legally marry his widow’s sister in Mississippi?
It’s hard to marry anyone when you’re dead.
How many triangles are in the picture?
16 triangles
Larry lied on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays but told the truth every other day of the week.
Ken lied on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays but told the truth every other day of the week.
Larry: I lied yesterday.
Ken: I lied yesterday, too.
What day of the week was yesterday?
Wednesday
There are ten fingers on two hands. How many fingers are there on ten hands?
50
There were ten cars in the shop. Customers bought all but nine of them. How many remain in the shop?
9
If you have a cube, each edge two inches long, how many total square inches are there among all eight sides?
Cubes have six sides.
Is it correct to say, “the yolk of eggs is white” or “the yolk of eggs are white”?
Neither, egg yolks are yellow.
When is a door not a door?
When it’s ajar.
Dead on the field lie ten soldiers in white, felled by three eyes, black as night. What happened?
A bowling ball knocked down ten pins.
It is weightless, and you can see it. If you put it in a bucket, it will make the bucket lighter. What is it?
Hole
Where can you find cities, towns, shops, and streets but no people?
A map
Brothers and sisters have I none, but that man’s father is my father’s son. How can this be?
You’re looking at yourself in a mirror.
George, Helen, and Steve are drinking coffee. Bert, Karen, and Dave are drinking soda. Is Elizabeth drinking coffee or soda?
Elizabeth is drinking coffee. The letter E appears twice in her name, as it does in the names of others drinking coffee.
The sharp, slim blade that cuts the wind. What is it?
Grass
A house with two occupants, sometimes one, rarely three. Break the walls, eat the borders. What am I?
Peanut
I can sizzle like bacon; I am made with an egg,
I have plenty of backbone but lack a good leg.
I peel layers like onions but still remain whole.
I can be long like a flagpole yet fit in a hole.
What am I?
Snake
I travel the world, and I am drunk constantly. Who am I?
Water
I’m where yesterday follows today, and tomorrow is in the middle. What am I?
Dictionary
How far can a dog run into the woods?
Only halfway. After that, he’s running out of the woods.
What was, before was was was?
Is
Where can you add 2 to 11 and get 1?
Clock
Trick Questions For Kids
Kids love trick questions. Just be prepared for your family to descend into giggles when you deliver some of these answers!
Mrs. Lionel’s one-story house is decorated completely in yellow. The walls, carpet, and furniture are all shades of yellow. What color are the stairs?
There are no stairs.
Some months have 31 days, others have 30 days, but how many have 28 days?
All 12
Beth’s mother has three daughters. One is called Lara, and the other one is Sara. What is the name of the third daughter?
Beth
Ronald eats 1 carrot on Sunday, 2 carrots on Monday, 4 carrots on Tuesday, and so on. How many carrots does he eat every week?
127 carrots
If tomorrow I said, “the day before yesterday was Saturday,” which day is today?
Sunday
Sophia ordered six bowls of ice cream with three scoops in each. Toby wants as many scoops as Sophia but in just two dishes. How many scoops are in each of his dishes?
9 scoops in each
If every month had exactly 30 days instead of some with 29, some with 30, and some with 31, would each year be longer or shorter?
Shorter. A year would be 360 days.
The cars started at the same time. The yellow car reached the finish line in 5 minutes, while the red car reached it in 7. Which car was faster?
The yellow car.
I have no sword, I have no spear, yet rule a horde which many fear, my soldiers fight with wicked sting, I rule with might, yet am no king. What am I?
A queen bee.
What peels like an onion but remains whole?
Lizard
When is it bad luck to meet a white cat?
When you’re a mouse
MT_TF_S What are the missing letters? Why?
W and S for days of the week
What do pandas have that no other animal has?
Baby pandas
What fish came first?
Goldfish
What king can you make if you take the head of a lamb, the middle of a pig, the hind of a buffalo, and the tail of a dragon?
Lion
I run around the city, but I never move.
Wall
You are in a room with 3 monkeys. One monkey has a banana, one has a stick, and one has nothing. Who is the smartest primate?
You
2 people in front of 2 people. 2 people behind 2 people, and 2 people beside 2 people. How many people are there?
Four
What part of a fish weighs most?
Scales
What’s higher than the king?
Crown
The sun bakes them,
The hand breaks them,
The foot treads them,
The mouth tastes them.
Grapes
Trick Questions To Ask Your Friends
These questions are getting more complicated as we go! Test your friends’ problem-solving skills with these questions.
Look at this series: 12, 11, 13, 12, 14, 13, … What number should come next?
15. This is an alternating number of subtraction series. First, 1 is subtracted, then 2 is added.
A man has 53 socks in his drawer: 21 identical blue, 15 identical black, and 17 identical red. The lights are out, and he is completely in the dark. How many socks must he take out to make 100 percent certain he has at least one pair of black socks?
40 socks.
Sally and Lynn decided to play pickleball against each other. They bet $1 on each game they played. Sally won three bets, and Lynn won $5. How many games did they play?
Eleven. Because Lynn lost three games to Sally, she lost $3. So, she had to win back that $3 with three more games, then win another five games to win $5.
If a giraffe has two eyes, a monkey has two eyes, and an elephant has two eyes, how many eyes do we have?
Four eyes. Assuming the person asking the question has two eyes, and the person being asked has two eyes, the total is four.
One boat is overtaking another. Which boat must give way?
The boat which is overtaken must give way to the boat which is overtaking.
There are only two barbers in town. One of them has a nice, neatly trimmed head of hair. The other one’s hair is a complete mess. Which of the two barbers should you go to and why?
The one with messy hair, as they cut the neat barber’s hair.
Two fathers took their sons to a fruit stall. Each man and son bought an apple, But when they returned home, they had only 3 apples. They did not eat any, lose any, or throw any away. How could this be possible?
There were only three people. Son, father, and grandfather.
What is so delicate that even mentioning it breaks it?
Silence
What two keys can’t open any door?
A monkey and a donkey.
Thanks to me, you can see straight through walls. What am I?
A window.
What can you hold without touching it at all?
A conversation.
What belongs to you but gets used by everyone else more than you?
Your name.
How can a girl go 25 days without sleep?
She sleeps at night.
Trick Math Questions
These math questions are sure to challenge your number skills and strengthen your lateral thinking.
What do you get if you divide 30 by half and add ten?
70. Half is .5, and if you divide 30 by 0.5, you get 60. Add ten, and you have 70.
You are standing on top of a 200ft cliff face. There is a ledge halfway up (100ft from the ground). A suitable anchor point is also at the top and near the ledge.
You have a knife and a rope that is 150 feet. How do you get to the bottom?
Hint: You cannot splice the rope, fall more than a few feet, or any other lateral thinking answer, but you can assume that tying the rope to an anchor takes up zero length.
I would cut a 50-foot length of the rope, tie it to the anchor point at the top and fashion a small loop at the other end. Then thread the 100-foot length halfway through the loop so that it extends the rope by 50 feet.
Then I would climb down to the lower ledge and pull on one end of the rope to unthread it from the loop. Using the 100 feet of rope, I would reach the bottom by attaching it to the lower anchor and climbing down.
There are three matches on a table. Without adding any other match stick, make a four with them. You should not break any of the matches.
Use the three matchsticks to make the shape of a roman number four: IV.
Can we add five to nine to get two?
Yes. This is possible if we add 5 hrs to 9 am/pm to get 2 am/pm.
9876, 6987, 7698, What is the next number in the series?
8769
The last digit of the number is moved to the beginning to make the next number.
How can you get 720 using 98 by using just one letter or character?
Using x
98 in words is ninety-eight. Putting an ‘X’ between ninety and eight would make it ninety x eight, i.e., 90 x 8 = 720
If it is two hours later, it will take half as much time till midnight as it would be if it were an hour later from now. What time is it?
Nine o’clock. When adding two hours to 9, it becomes 11 o’clock, and it would take half of two hours after an hour till midnight, i.e., 10 o’clock + 1 hour would be 11 o’clock.
In a town with farms, there are farmers and cows. In all, there are 24 heads and 78 feet. How many farmers and how many cows are in the town?
15 cows and 9 farmers
15 x 4 = 60, as cows have 4 legs and 9 x 2 = 18, as humans have two legs. The total would be 78.
How many times can you subtract 4 from 8?
Only once. Once 4 is subtracted from the total of 8, it is no longer 8.
How can you get the number 28 using five 2s?
2+22+2+2=28
If there are four apples and you take away three, how many do you have?
You took three apples, so you have three.
A 300 ft. train is traveling 300 ft. per minute and must travel through a 300 ft. long tunnel. How long will it take the train to travel through the tunnel?
Two minutes. It takes the front of the train one minute, and the rest of the train will take two minutes to clear the tunnel.
When Miguel was 6 years old, his little sister, Leila, was half his age. If Miguel is 40 years old today, how old is Leila?
She is 37 years old.
A duck was given $9, a spider was given $36, and a bee was given $27. Based on this information, how much money would be given to a cat?
$18 ($4.50 per leg)
Which weighs more, 16 ounces of soda or a pound of solid gold?
Neither. They both weigh the same.
The clothing store owner has made his own method of pricing items. A vest costs $20, socks cost $25, a tie costs $15, and a blouse costs $30. Using the method, how much would a pair of underwear cost?
$45. The pricing method charges $5 for each letter required to spell the item.
What 4 days of the week start with the letter T?
Tuesday, Thursday, Today, and Tomorrow.
A farmer had 17 sheep. All but 9 of them ran away. How many sheep does she have left?
Nine
If 3 cats can catch 3 bunnies in 3 minutes, how long will it take 100 cats to catch 100 bunnies?
3 minutes
I was 10 years old the day before yesterday. By next year, I will be 13 years old. How is that possible?
You are making this statement on January 1st of the new year, and your birthday was on the 31st of December.
Regardless of what number you start with, if you add it to itself, then multiply by 4 and again divide the number by 8, it will give you what number?
The number you started with.
If 1=5
2=25
3=325
4=4325
5=?
Did you guess 54325? The correct answer is 1. The first line is 1=5 and that means 5 is equal to one.
What is the number of the parking space the car is parked in?
If you look at the parking spaces the way the driver would have pulled in, you’ll see the numbers facing us are upside down.
You’re in a boat with a big rock, in a swimming pool. You toss the rock overboard. What happens to the level of the water in the pool?
It goes down.
Interview Trick Questions
Google1 used to be known for their trick questions and long interview process, but they’ve discovered these aren’t effective for hiring the best people. Instead of picking tricky questions for your next interview, try these behavioral questions instead; they are still a bit tricky!
What’s something you used to believe that you no longer do?
Tell me about your best and worst days at work.
If I called your current boss, what would they say about you?
Are you working on anything exciting outside of work?
You have two teleportation devices. Where do you place them and why?
If you didn’t have to work, why would you come into the office?
Describe the last significant conflict you had at work and how you handled it.
Is there something I didn’t ask that I should have asked you?
Trick Love Questions
We’re also not a proponent of trap questions. Instead of asking trick questions to trap your significant other or potential love interest, ask some of these tricky but interesting questions to build relationship.
Would you like to be famous? In what way?
Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you’re going to say?
What would constitute a perfect day for you?
When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you choose?
Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
If you could wake up tomorrow having gained one quality or ability, what would it be?
Trick Yes Or No Questions
These trick questions are great conversation starters, especially for introverts. Like trick love questions or interview questions, the answer depends on the person you’re asking!
Would you start a relationship if you knew you had to part ways in 6 months?
If tomorrow was the end of the world, would you be happy with how your life has turned out?
Do you sing silly, made-up songs in the shower?
Do you believe you should never go to bed angry?
Have you ever accidentally hit “reply-all” to an email?
Would you ever appear on a game show?
Do I have any habits that annoy you?
Would you tell me if I smelled bad?
Do you ever pick your nose when you think no one is watching?
Do you have an embarrassing nickname?
Have you ever told an outrageous lie to someone?
If you learned that I was secretly royalty, would you be surprised?
Do you feel like you belong at work?
Do you daydream?
Would you hang out with your coworkers outside of work?
Would you betray a friend for a million dollars?
Would you want to know if you could find out how you would die?
Would you commit a crime to protect your family?
Do you know my middle name?
Are you good at keeping secrets?
Would you defend me, even if you knew I was wrong?
Have you ever said something nice about me behind my back?
Trick Trivia Questions
With what country is France’s longest land border?
Brazil, because of French Guyana.
Where is the world’s largest desert?
Antarctica
Which of these is a dinosaur? A chicken or a pterodactyl?
Chickens are descendants of dinosaurs, while the pterodactyl is not considered a dinosaur.
Are Bugatti cars made in France or Italy?
France
What’s Paul McCartney’s middle name?
Paul. His full name was James Paul McCartney.
What company is the world’s largest distributor of toys?
Macdonald’s with nearly 1.5 billion toys annually worldwide.
What mountain peak is farthest from the center of the earth?
Chimborazo in Ecuador. Because of the equatorial bulge, it is farthest from the earth’s core.
Which US president is on the $100 bill?
None. Ben Franklin is on the $100 bill but was never president.
Which city is further west: Reno or Los Angeles?
Reno, Nevada is further west.
What is the official language of the United States?
At a federal level, there is no official language.
What is the only officially bilingual province in Canada?
New Brunswick. Quebec’s official language is only French.
How many wings does a flea have?
None. Fleas don’t have wings.
What company produces the most tires in the world?
Lego
What city is farther north, Rome or New York?
Rome is a little bit further north than New York.
Household dust is mainly made up of what ingredient?
Dead skin cells.
What country has the most pyramids in the world?
Sudan. While Egypt has 138, there are around 255 in Sudan.
What continent covers all four hemispheres?
Africa
The first animated feature film was made where?
Argentina. El Apóstol debuted in Argentina 20 years before Walt Disney’s famous animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Where was German chocolate cake invented?
Texas, USA
Why do lemons float and limes sink?
Limes are denser than lemons.
Only one letter doesn’t appear in any US state name. What is it?
The letter Q
Peanuts aren’t nuts. What are they?
Legumes
No number before 1,000 contains which vowel?
None of the numbers before 1,000 contain the letter A.
Why does the Eiffel Tower grow up to six inches during the summer?
High temperatures make iron expand.
What is the Latin word for “watering place for cattle.”
Aquarium
What grade did Martin Luther King Jr. get in public speaking at seminary?
C
Hardest Trick Questions
These questions will test your logic, assumptions, and lateral thinking. Think you can handle it?
My father is a chemist, and my mother is a mathematician. They gave me a codename that could be translated into my real name. My codename is “Iron59” what is my real name?
Felix. Iron for Fe, and 59 as the Roman word for Lix.
You are driving down the road on a wild, stormy night when you pass by a bus stop, and you see three people waiting for the bus:
1. An old lady who looks like she is about to die.
2. An old friend who once saved your life.
3. Your first love that you’ve never gotten over.
There can only be one passenger in your car. If you don’t reunite with your first love now, you won’t have another opportunity. But you can’t let the old lady die, and you can’t call for an ambulance.
What can you do?
After helping the old lady into the car, give your keys to your friend, and wait with your lost love for the bus.
Acting on an anonymous phone call, the police raid a house to arrest a suspected murderer. They don’t know what he looks like, but they know his name is John, and he is inside the house. The police bust in on a carpenter, a lorry driver, a mechanic, and a fireman, all playing poker. Without hesitation or communication of any kind, they immediately arrest the fireman. How do they know they’ve got their man?
The fireman is the only man in the room. The rest of the poker players are women.
You are driving a bus. The bus is empty when you begin your route. At the first stop, three people get on. At the second stop, nine people get on, and two get off. At the third stop, four people get off, and two get on. What color are the bus driver’s eyes?
You are the bus driver—what color are your eyes?
A couple enters a grand ballroom only to find the occupants are dead. There has been no crime committed. The couple is not concerned by what they have found. How is this possible?
The couple is scuba diving on a sunken cruise ship. The occupants in the ballroom had drowned when the ship sank suddenly in a terrible disaster at sea.
A man pushes his car until he reaches a hotel. When he arrives, he goes bankrupt. What happened?
He’s playing Monopoly, and his piece is the car. He lands in a space with a hotel and doesn’t have the money to pay the fee.
A woman in a department store fills her basket to the top and leaves the store without paying. Although she is seen, no one calls the police or attempts to stop her. Why?
The woman works there. She fills the basket with trash and takes it to the dumpster.
Why are manhole covers round?
A square manhole cover can be turned and dropped down the diagonal of the manhole. A round manhole cover cannot be dropped down the manhole. So for safety reasons, all manhole covers should be round.
Tips and Tricks to Solve Trick Sections
Slow down. Your immediate answer is probably not the correct one when it comes to trick questions.
Listen carefully. Listen to all the details, and think about what is being said—literally and figuratively.
Ask to hear it again. If you’re unsure, ask them to repeat the trick question so you can process it again.
Think creatively. Many trick questions require logic or creative thinking. Pause for a moment and look at the words in your mind from different angles.
1. Riddle: What has a face and two hands but no arms or legs? Answer: A clock.
2. Riddle: What does a house wear? Answer: Ad-dress.
3. Riddle: Where would you take a sick boat? Answer: To the dock.
4. Riddle: I give milk and I have a horn, but I’m not a cow. What am I? Answer: A milk truck.
5. Riddle: Why did the fly never land on the computer? Answer: He was afraid of the world wide web.
6. Riddle: What creature is smarter than a talking parrot? Answer: A spelling bee!
7. Riddle: What rock group consists of four famous men, but none of them sing? Answer: Mount Rushmore.
8. Riddle: What kind of murderer is full of fiber? Answer: A cereal killer.
9. Riddle: I have hundreds of wheels, but move I do not. Call me what I am; call me a lot. What am I? Answer: A parking lot.
10. Riddle: How does a bee get to school? Answer: On a buzz!
If you’re enjoying this funny collection, you’ll love our ultimate list of riddles!
11. Riddle: What kind of running leads to walking? Answer: Running out of gas!
12. Riddle: I Start with M, end with X, and have a never-ending amount of letters. What am I? Answer: A mailbox
13. Riddle: Why are As like flowers? Answer: Because Bs come after them!
14. Riddle: What is orange and sounds like a parrot? Answer: A carrot.
15. Riddle: A farmer has twenty sheep, ten pigs, and ten cows. If we call the pigs cows, how many cows will he have? Answer: Ten cows. We can call the pigs cows, but it doesn’t make them cows.
16. Riddle: Why did Tigger go to the bathroom? Answer: He wanted to find his friend, Pooh!
17. Riddle: What do you call a snail on a ship? Answer: A snailor!
18. Riddle: I make a loud sound when I’m changing. When I do change, I get bigger but weigh less. What am I? Answer: Popcorn.
19. Riddle: Why did the skeleton not go to the party? Answer: Because he had no body to go with.
20. Riddle: I travel all around the world, but never leave the corner. What am I? Answer: A stamp.
They might not be funny, but our math riddles will definitely make you think!
21. Riddle: What type of music do rabbits listen to? Answer: Hip hop!
22. Riddle: During what month do people sleep the least? Answer: February. It’s the shortest month!
23. Riddle: What is on the ground and also a hundred feet in the air? Answer: A centipede on its back!
24. Riddle: I have a neck but no head, and I wear a cap. What am I? Answer: A bottle.
25. Riddle: Why is someone who borrows money but does not pay it all back like a football agent? Answer: Because sometimes he gives you a quarter back and sometimes a half back.
26. Riddle: What kind of room has no doors or windows? Answer: A Mushroom
27. Riddle: What fruit can you never cheer up? Answer: A blueberry.
28. Riddle: Why is England the wettest country? Answer: Because the queen has reigned there for years!
29. Riddle: Mr. Blue lives in the blue house. Mr. Yellow lives in the yellow house. Mr. Black lives in the black house. Who lives in the white house? Answer: The president!
30. Riddle: What can make the octopus laugh? Answer: Ten tickles (tentacles)!
125 Trick Questions
1. What are two things you can never eat for breakfast?
Lunch and Dinner
2. What is always coming but never arrives?
Tomorrow
3. What gets wetter the more it dries?
A towel
4. What can be broken but never held?
A promise
5. What word is spelled incorrectly in every single dictionary?
Incorrectly
6. What is it that lives if it is fed, and dies if you give it a drink?
Fire
7. What never asks a question but gets answered all the time?
Your cellphone
8. What word would you use to describe a man who does not have all his fingers on one hand?
Normal, because people usually have half their fingers on one hand.
22. If you spell “sit in the tub” s-o-a-k, and you spell “a funny story” j-o-k-e, how do you spell “the white of an egg”?
E-G-G W-H-I-T-E
23. A cowboy rode into town on Friday. He stayed in town for three days and rode out on Friday. How is that possible?
His horse is named Friday
24. Is it legal for a man to marry his widow’s sister?
No, but since he is dead it would be hard to do so.
25. What two keys can’t open any door?
A monkey and a donkey
26. If Mrs. John’s one-story house is decorated completely in pink, with the walls, carpet, and furniture all shades of pink, what color are the stairs?
There are no stairs
27. What will you actually find at the end of every rainbow?
The letter ‘W’
28. How did the boy kick his soccer ball ten feet, and then have it come back to him on its own?
29. A young boy was rushed to the hospital emergency room, but the ER doctor saw the boy and refused to operate. “This boy is my son,” the doctor said. But the doctor wasn’t the boy’s father. How could this be?
The doctor was the boy’s mom
30. How could a man go outside in the pouring rain without protection, and not have a hair on his head get wet?
He is bald
31. What has a face and two hands, but no arms or legs?
A clock
32. If an electric train is moving north at 100mph and a wind is blowing to the west at 10mph, which way does the smoke blow?
An electric train has no smoke
33. I start out tall, but the longer I stand, the shorter I grow. What am I?
A candle
34. How was it possible that every single person in an airplane crash died, but two people survived?
36. What breaks and never falls, and what falls and never breaks?
Day breaks and night falls
37. What can run but not walk?
Rain drops
38. Some months have 31 days, others have 30 days, but how many have 28 days?
All 12
39. Thanks to me, you can see straight through the wall. What am I?
A window
40. “The attorney is my brother,” testified the accountant. But the attorney testified he did not have a brother. Who is lying?
Neither one, because the accountant was his sister
41. Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks?
Neither. They both weigh exactly one pound
42. Uncle Bill’s farm had a terrible storm and all but seven sheep were killed. How many sheep are still alive?
Seven
43. How can the pocket of your pants be empty, but still have something in it?
When the something is a hole.
44. What do you call a woman who knows where her husband is all the time?
A widow
45. What has a thumb and four fingers but isn’t actually alive?
A glove
46. What do you sit on, sleep on, and brush your teeth with?
A chair, a bed, and a toothbrush
47. Imagine you’re in a room that’s filling up with water quickly. There are no windows or doors. How do you get out?
Stop imagining
48. What goes up and down, but always remains in the same place?
Stairs
49. Everyone in the world needs it, but they usually give it without taking it. What is it?
Advice
50. What happened when the wheel was invented?
It caused a revolution
51. What can you hold without touching it at all?
A conversation
52. What has a head, a tail, but does not have a body?
A coin
53. I am an odd number. Take away one letter and I become even. What number am I?
Seven (take away the ‘s’ and it becomes ‘even’)
54. Who is bigger, Mr. Bigger, Mrs. Bigger, or their baby?
The baby, since he is a little Bigger.
55. I’m light as a feather, but not even the strongest girl can hold me for more than 5 minutes. What am I?
Breath
56. If you sit a cup on the table facing south while you are on the north side of the table, on which side is the cup’s handle?
No matter which way the cup is turned, the handle is always on the outside
57. Two mothers and two daughters went out to eat, everyone ate one slice of pizza, yet only three slices were eaten. How’s that possible?
The group included a grandmother, her daughter and her daughter’s daughter.
58. A man lives on the 100th floor of an apartment building. On rainy days he rides the elevator all the way up. However, on sunny days, he goes half way and takes the stairs the rest of the way. Why?
The man is short and can only reach the button for the 50th floor on the elevator. On rainy days, he uses his umbrella handle.
59. What 5-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?
Short
60. A man dressed in all black is walking down a country lane. Suddenly, a large black car with no lights on comes around the corner and screeches to a halt. How did the car’s driver know he was there?
It was day time
61. Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday?
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow
62. Robert, my neighbor, a forty-five-year-old blacksmith is seven feet tall, and eats all day long. What does he weigh?
Iron
63. What gets sharper the more you use it?
Your brain
64. There are three important rooms in a house. The first one is filled with money. The second one is filled with important papers. The third one is filled with jewelry. One day all of these rooms burst into fire. Which room did the policemen put out the fire in first?
None of them, because policemen do not put out fires; firemen do
65. What can you make that no one—not even you—can see?
Noise
66. Why are 1968 pennies worth more than 1967 pennies?
Because there is one more penny in 1968 pennies than in 1967 pennies
67. What belongs to you but gets used by everyone else more than you?
Your name
68. There are eight men sitting on a couch. Three legs break and six men leave. How many legs are remaining?
Five; the legs of the two remaining men and the remaining couch leg.
69. You are driving a bus. When you begin your route, there is an old woman named Mrs. Smith and a young boy named Raymond are on the bus. At the first stop, the old woman leaves, and a salesman, named Ed, enters. At the next stop, Jack and his sister Jill get on, as well as three women with shopping bags. The bus travels fifteen minutes, then stops and Raymond gets off and a man and his wife get on. Next, a woman with a bird in a cage gets on the bus. What is the name of the bus driver?
It’s you!
70. What occurs once in a minute, twice in a moment, and never in one thousand years?
The letter M
71. What is the maximum number of times a single page of a newspaper can be folded in half by hand?
Once
72. I’m so fragile that if you say my name, you’ll break me. What am I?
Silence
73. On a Sunday morning, the oldest girl in a family was murdered. The father was reading the paper, the mother was in the kitchen cooking breakfast, and the girl’s brother was playing video games. Uncle George was visiting and was out getting the mail. Who murdered the girl?
Uncle George. Mail isn’t delivered on Sundays
74. What’s full of holes but can still hold liquid?
A sponge
75. What two words, when combined, hold the most letters?
110. I have one head, one foot, and four legs. What am I?
Your bed
111. What has one eye but can’t see anything at all?
A needle
112. If you were running a race and passed the person in second place, what place would you be in now?
Second place
113. If you threw a red rock into a green sea, what would it come back as?
Wet
114. What kind of tree can you carry in your hand?
A palm
115. The teacher asked the two girls who looked exactly like the following questions: a.) Are you from the same family? b.) Do you have the same parents? c.) Were you born on the same day? They answered truthfully “yes” to those questions, and yet told the truth when they indicated they were not twins. How can this be?
They were triplets
116. A woman pushes her car to a hotel and then proceeds to tell the owner that she is bankrupt. Why?
She is playing Monopoly
117. If Mr Smith’s peacock lays an egg in Mr Jones’ yard, who owns the egg?
Peacocks don’t lay eggs
118. A 10 foot rope ladder hangs over the side of a boat with the bottom rung on the surface of the water. The rungs are one foot apart, and the tide goes up at the rate of 6 inches per hour. How long will it be until three rungs are covered?
Never. The boat rises as the tide goes up.
119. A truck driver is going down a one way street the wrong way, and passes at least ten cops. Why is he not caught?
Because he was not driving! He’s walking on the sidewalk
120. If a doctor gives you 3 pills and tells you to take one pill every half hour, how long would it take before all the pills had been taken?
1 hour! Take the 1st pill right away, half an hour later take the 2nd and half an hour after that the 3rd.
121. Name the most recent year in which New Year’s came before Christmas.
This year. New Year’s always comes before Christmas of the same year.
122. How many times can you subtract 10 from 100?
Once. Next time you would be subtracting 10 from 90.
123. Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?
No one. Ulysses Grant is interred in Grant’s tomb but not buried.
124. Before Mount Everest was discovered, what was the tallest mountain on Earth?
Mount Everest
125. If the vice president were to die, who is supposed to be president?
The President
250 Best ‘Would You Rather’ Questions To Learn More About Friends Than You Ever Expected
Would You Rather Questions
Unsplash
One of the best ways to really get to know people better—even those close to you—is a classic game of “Would You Rather.” The best Would You Rather questions for adults reveal surprising things about every participant, and really good Would You Rather questions make players think about what they value most, be it love or money, integrity or ego, privacy or freedom, or even just salt over sugar. It’s not always a Sophie’s Choice-type situation: these questions can be downright weird, gross, funny or philosophical. As long as it makes you think, it works.
We’ve rounded up the 250 best Would You Rather questions that run the gamut from serious to silly. Bust a few out at your next party and get ready to learn more about your friends and family than you ever expected.
Would You Rather Questions
1. Would you rather have the ability to see 10 minutes into the future or 150 years into the future?
2. Would you rather have telekinesis (the ability to move things with your mind) or telepathy (the ability to read minds)?
3. Would you rather team up with Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel?
4. Would you rather be forced to sing along or dance to every single song you hear?
5. Would you rather find true love today or win the lottery next year?
6. Would you rather be in jail for five years or be in a coma for a decade?
7. Would you rather have another 10 years with your partner or a one-night stand with your celebrity crush?
8. Would you rather be chronically under-dressed or overdressed?
9. Would you rather have everyone you know be able to read your thoughts or for everyone you know to have access to your Internet history?
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10. Would you rather lose your sight or your memories?
11. Would you rather have universal respect or unlimited power?
12. Would you rather give up air conditioning and heating for the rest of your life or give up the Internet for the rest of your life?
13. Would you rather swim in a pool full of Nutella or a pool full of maple syrup?
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14. Would you rather labor under a hot sun or extreme cold?
15. Would you rather stay in during a snow day or build a fort?
16. Would you rather buy 10 things you don’t need every time you go shopping or always forget the one thing that you need when you go to the store?
17. Would you rather never be able to go out during the day or never be able to go out at night?
18. Would you rather have a personal maid or a personal chef?
19. Would you rather be 11 feet tall or nine inches tall?
20. Would you rather have Beyoncé’s talent or Jay-Z‘s business acumen?
21. Would you rather be an extra in an Oscar-winning movie or the lead in a box office bomb?
22. Would you rather vomit on your hero or have your hero vomit on you?
23. Would you rather communicate only in emoji or never be able to text at all ever again?
24. Would you rather be royalty 1,000 years ago or an average person today?
25. Would you rather lounge by the pool or on the beach?
26. Would you rather wear the same socks for a month or the same underwear for a week?
27. Would you rather work an overtime shift with your annoying boss or spend full day with your mother-in-law?
28. Would you rather cuddle a koala or pal around with a panda?
29. Would you rather have a sing-off with Ariana Grande or a dance-off with Rihanna?
30. Would you rather always have B.O. and not know it or always smell B.O. on everyone else?
81. Would you rather go on a cruise with your boss or never go on vacation ever again?
82. Would you rather forget your partner’s birthday or your anniversary every year?
83. Would you rather have to wear stilettos to sleep or have to wear slippers everywhere you go?
84. Would you rather change the outcome of the last election or get to decide the outcome of the next election?
85. Would you rather lose the ability to read or lose the ability to speak?
86. Would you rather smooch Chris Pratt, Chris Pine, Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth?
87. Would you rather be beautiful and stupid or unattractive but a genius?
88. Would you rather have seven fingers on each hand or seven toes on each foot?
89. Would you rather work the job you have now for a year at double your current rate of pay or have one year off with what you are making now?
90. Would you rather be always stuck in traffic but find a perfect parking spot or never hit traffic but always take forever to park?
91. Would you rather have super-sensitive taste buds or super-sensitive hearing?
92. Would you rather ask your ex or a total stranger for a favor?
93. Would you rather go on tour with Elton John or Cher?
94. Would you rather eat only pizza for a year or not eat any pizza for five years?
95. Would you rather never get another present in your life but always pick the perfect present for everyone else or keep getting presents but giving terrible ones to everyone else?
96. Would you rather sleep in a doghouse or let stray dogs sleep in your bed?
97. Would you rather be able to speak any language or be able to communicate with animals?
98. Would you rather have all of your messages and photos leak publicly or never use a cellphone ever again?
99. Would you rather run at 100 mph or fly at 20 mph?
100. Would you rather have Adele‘s voice or Normani’s dance moves?
157. Would you rather go back to kindergarten with everything you know now or know now everything your future self will learn?
158. Would you rather be able to read minds or predict the future?
159. Would you rather take a pill a day for nutrients and to feel full, but never eat anything again or eat whatever you want but never really feel full?
160. Would you rather be an unknown superhero or an infamous villain?
161. Would you rather always have an annoying song stuck in your head or always have an itch that you can’t reach?
162. Would you rather never be able to keep anyone else’s secrets or have someone tell all of your secrets?
170. Would you rather work a high-paying job that you hate or your dream job with only just enough money for rent, food and utilities?
171. Would you rather wake up naked in a forest five miles from home or in your underwear at work?
172. Would you rather go backstage with your favorite band or be an extra on your favorite TV show?
173. Would you rather never eat your favorite food for the rest of your life or only eat your favorite food?
174. Would you rather be able to erase your own memories or be able to erase someone else’s memories?
175. Would you rather be so afraid of heights that you can’t go to the second floor of a building or be so afraid of the sun that you can only leave the house on rainy days?
176. Would you rather have a rap battle against Nicki Minaj or Lizzo?
177. Would you rather save your best friend’s life if it meant five strangers would die or save five strangers if it meant sacrificing your best friend?
178. Would you rather give up coffee or soda forever?
179. Would you rather find a $100 bill floating in a public toilet or a $20 bill in your own pocket?
180. Would you rather wear nothing but neon orange or neon green for an entire year?
181. Would you rather eat the same thing for every meal for a year or be able to eat whatever you wanted, but only once every three days?
182. Would you rather get drunk off of one sip of alcohol or never get drunk no matter how much booze you imbibe?
183. Would you rather sell all of your possessions or sell one of your organs?
184. Would you rather clean a toilet with your toothbrush or a floor with your tongue?
185. Would you rather be asked the same question over and over again or never be spoken to ever again?
186. Would you rather be reincarnated as a fly or just stop existing when you die?
187. Would you rather be serenaded by Justin Bieber or Justin Timberlake?
188. Would you rather be unable to close any door once it’s open or be unable to open any door once it’s closed?
189. Would you rather throw the best parties but have to clean up the mess by yourself or never go to a party again?
190. Would you rather have a tattoo of the title of the last book you read or the last TV show you watched?
191. Would you rather wear clothes that were always way too big or a couple sizes too small?
192. Would you rather give your parents or your boss access to your browser history?
193. Would you rather only be able to wash your hair twice a year or only be able to check your phone once a day?
194. Would you rather have a tennis lesson from Serena Williams or a soccer lesson from Meghan Rapinoe?
195. Would you rather have a permanent unibrow or no eyebrows at all?
196. Would you rather have aliens be real and covered up by the government or have no extraterrestrial life at all in the universe?
197. Would you rather be caught liking your ex’s Instagram pics or your partner’s ex’s Instagram pics?
198. Would you rather never eat cookies ever again or only ever drink water?
199. Would you rather donate your organs to those who need them or donate your entire body to science?
200. Would you rather be criticized or be ignored?
201. Would you rather work alongside Dwight Schrute or Homer Simpson?
202. Would you rather be punished for a crime you didn’t commit or have someone else take credit for one of your major accomplishments?
203. Would you rather eat an undercooked meal or a burnt meal?
204. Would you rather get a cooking lesson from Gordon Ramsay or Ina Garten?
205. Would you rather have your boss or your parents look through your text messages?
206. Would you rather have your first child when you’re 18 or when you’re 50?
207. Would you rather star in a Star Warsor a Marvel film?
208. Would you rather wear heels to the gym or sneakers to a wedding?
209. Would you rather give up brushing your hair or give us brushing your teeth?
210. Would you rather master every musical instrument or every type of sport?
211. Would you rather always have wet socks or a small rock in your shoe?
212. Would you rather have Celine Dion or Eminem perform the soundtrack to your life?
213. Would you rather be the class clown or the teacher’s pet?
214. Would you rather bathe in the dishwater or wash dishes in your bathwater?
215. Would you rather show up to a job interview with stained pants or pit stains?
216. Would you rather never age physically or never age mentally?
217. Would you rather date someone with bad breath or bad manners?
218. Would you rather never wear makeup ever again or wear a full face of the wrong shades every day?
219. Would you rather read the book or watch the movie?
220. Would you rather have a slumber party with Anna Kendrick or go to a comedy show with Rebel Wilson?
221. Would you rather eat chocolate on pizza or never eat chocolate ever again?
222. Would you rather have X-ray vision of people you find unattractive or everyone else have X-ray vision of you?
223. Would you rather have your own theme park or your own zoo?
224. Would you rather be the star player on a losing team or warm the bench on a championship roster?
225. Would you rather know when you’re going to die or how you’re going to die?
226. Would you rather lose all of your teeth or all of your hair?
227. Would you rather watch nothing but The Officeor Friends for the rest of your life?
228. Would you rather lose your keys or your phone?
229. Would you rather live in a home with no electricity or in a home with no running water?
230. Would you rather be rich with no friends or poor and popular?
231. Would you rather look strong and be weak or look weak and be strong?
232. Would you rather have your style critiqued by Anna Wintour or Miranda Priestly?
233. Would you rather wear one or seven colors everyday?
234. Would you rather sneeze nonstop for 15 minutes once every day or sneeze once every three minutes of the day while you’re awake?
235. Would you rather walk barefoot in a public bathroom or through poison ivy?
236. Would you rather have the ability to see 10 years into your own future or six months into the future of the world?
237. Would you rather nobody remember who you are at your 20-year class reunion or have everybody comment on how old you look?238. Would you rather shoot hoops with LeBron James or toss a football with Tom Brady?
239. Would you rather live through an episode of Orange Is The New Black or Black Mirror?
240. Would you rather only be able to listen to Christmas songs all year round or only be able to watch nothing but horror movies?
241. Would you rather be a genius everyone thinks is an idiot or an idiot everyone thinks is a genius?
243. Would you rather be beloved by the general public but your family and friends hate you, or be hated by the general public but your family and friends love you?
244. Would you rather be color blind or lose your sense of taste?
245. Would you rather live on a desert island with your celebrity crush or in a mansion with your ex?
246. Would you rather pass gas every time you meet someone new or burp every time you kiss someone?
247. Would you rather have tea with Queen Elizabeth or a beer with Prince Harry?
248. Would you rather give up the Internet or showering for a month?
249. Would you rather get away with a terrible crime but live in fear of someone discovering it or go to prison for three years for a crime you didn’t commit?
250. Would you rather be forced to live the same day over and over again for a full year or take three years off the end of your life?
Feeling philosophical? Check out these 150 Life Quotes.
‘Good Times’ Star John Amos Breaks Silence on Daughter’s Elder Abuse Claims
Allow these 150 inspirational quotes about life to give you an extra pep in your step whenever you may need it. Keep these life quotes bookmarked on your phone or computer to pull up and scroll through whenever you need a little pick me up.
Life Quotes
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1. “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” — Dalai Lama
2. “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” — John Lennon
3. “Get busy living or get busy dying.” — Stephen King
4. “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” — Mae West
5. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”– Thomas A. Edison
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6. “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”– Albert Einstein
7. “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.”– Babe Ruth
8. “Money and success don’t change people; they merely amplify what is already there.” — Will Smith
9. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.” – Steve Jobs
10. “Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.” — Seneca
11. “If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
12. “The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.”– Henry Ford
13. “In order to write about life first you must live it.”– Ernest Hemingway
14. “The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.”– Frank Sinatra
15. “Sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching, and live like it’s heaven on earth.” – (Attributed to various sources)
16. “Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” – Leo Burnett
17. “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”– Soren Kierkegaard
18. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” — Socrates
19. “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” — Oprah Winfrey
20. “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” —Dolly Parton
21. “Do all the good you can, for all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as long as you can.” — Hillary Clinton (inspired by John Wesley quote)
22. “Don’t settle for what life gives you; make life better and build something.” — Ashton Kutcher
23. “Everybody wants to be famous, but nobody wants to do the work. I live by that. You grind hard so you can play hard. At the end of the day, you put all the work in, and eventually it’ll pay off. It could be in a year, it could be in 30 years. Eventually, your hard work will pay off.” — Kevin Hart
24. “Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.” — Kobe Bryant
25. “I like criticism. It makes you strong.” — LeBron James
26. “You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.” ― George Clooney
27. “Life imposes things on you that you can’t control, but you still have the choice of how you’re going to live through this.” — Celine Dion
28. “Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met – obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty.” — John F. Kennedy (JFK Quotes)
29. “Live for each second without hesitation.” — Elton John
30. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” — Albert Einstein
31. “Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.” — Confucius
32. “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” — Helen Keller
33. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” — Steve Jobs
34. “My mama always said, life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” — Forrest Gump (Forrest Gump Quotes)
35. “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”— Lao-Tze
36. “When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life or the life of another.” — Helen Keller
37. “The healthiest response to life is joy.” — Deepak Chopra
38. “Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once.” — Lillian Dickson
39. “The best portion of a good man’s life is his little nameless, unencumbered acts of kindness and of love.” — Wordsworth
40. “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” ― Robert Frost
43. “Maybe that’s what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars.” — Jack Kerouac
44. “Life is a flower of which love is the honey.” — Victor Hugo
45. “Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about.” — Marilyn Monroe
46. “Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.” — Buddha
47. “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” — Dr. Seuss
48. “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” — Mark Twain
49. “Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.” — Stephen Hawking
50. “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
51. “The greatest pleasure of life is love.” — Euripides
52. “Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.” — Grandma Moses
53. “Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.” — Benjamin Franklin
54. “Life is about making an impact, not making an income.” — Kevin Kruse
55. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan
56. “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” – Babe Ruth
57. “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” – Mark Twain
58. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin
59. “When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” – John Lennon
60. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” – Les Brown
61. “I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.” —Neil Armstrong
62. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” —Mahatma Gandhi
63. “If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person.” —Bill Clinton
64. “Life is short, and it is here to be lived.” —Kate Winslet
65. “The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” —Frank Lloyd Wright
66. “Every moment is a fresh beginning.” —T.S. Eliot
67. “When you cease to dream you cease to live.” —Malcolm Forbes
68. “If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine.” —Morris West
69. “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” —Dr. Seuss
70. “If you can do what you do best and be happy, you’re further along in life than most people.” —Leonardo DiCaprio
71. “We should remember that just as a positive outlook on life can promote good health, so can everyday acts of kindness.” —Hillary Clinton
72. “Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.” —Mary Kay Ash
73. “It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” —J. K. Rowling
74. “If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon. And if you’re not flexible, you’ll pound your head against the wall and you won’t see a different solution to a problem you’re trying to solve.” —Jeff Bezos
75. “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” — Abraham Lincoln
76. “You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.” —Michael Jordan
77. “Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow.” —Jay-Z
78. “There are no mistakes, only opportunities.” —Tina Fey
79. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” —Warren Buffett
80. “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” —Audrey Hepburn
81. “Sometimes you can’t see yourself clearly until you see yourself through the eyes of others.” —Ellen DeGeneres
82. “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” —Mahatma Gandhi
83. “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
84. “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes … the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules … You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things … They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius …” – Steve Jobs
85. “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
86. “Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too.” — Will Smith
87. “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”– Buddha
88. “Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.” – Sholom Aleichem
89. “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” – Bruce Lee
90. When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us. – Alexander Graham Bell
91. “Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.” — Anonymous
92. “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” – Omar Khayyam
93. “Happiness is the feeling that power increases — that resistance is being overcome.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
94. “I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.” — John Stuart Mill
95. “The secret of happiness, you see is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”-Socrates
96. “The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.” — Confucius
97. “The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”— Seneca
98. “Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.” — Henry David Thoreau
99. “When it is obvious that goals can’t be reached, don’t adjust the goals, but adjust the action steps.” — Confucius
100. “There may be people who have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do – and I believe that.” — Derek Jeter
101. “Don’t be afraid to fail. It’s not the end of the world, and in many ways, it’s the first step toward learning something and getting better at it.” — Jon Hamm
102. “Life is very interesting… in the end, some of your greatest pains, become your greatest strengths.” – Drew Barrymore
103. “I think if you live in a black-and-white world, you’re gonna suffer a lot. I used to be like that. But I don’t believe that anymore.” – Bradley Cooper
104. “I don’t believe in happy endings, but I do believe in happy travels, because ultimately, you die at a very young age, or you live long enough to watch your friends die. It’s a mean thing, life.” – George Clooney
105. “It’s never too late – never too late to start over, never too late to be happy.” – Jane Fonda
106. “You’re only human. You live once and life is wonderful, so eat the damned red velvet cupcake.” – Emma Stone
107. “A lot of people give up just before they’re about to make it. You know you never know when that next obstacle is going to be the last one.” – Chuck Norris(related: 101 Chuck Norris Jokes)
108. “Be nice to people on the way up, because you may meet them on the way down.” – Jimmy Durante
109. “I believe you make your day. You make your life. So much of it is all perception, and this is the form that I built for myself. I have to accept it and work within those compounds, and it’s up to me.” – Brad Pitt
110. “The minute that you’re not learning I believe you’re dead.” – Jack Nicholson
111. “Life’s tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.” – John Wayne
112. “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life — think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.” — Swami Vivekananda
113. “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” — Shawshank Redemption
114. “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” — Paulo Coelho
115. “There are three things you can do with your life: You can waste it, you can spend it, or you can invest it. The best use of your life is to invest it in something that will last longer than your time on Earth.” — Rick Warren
116. “You only pass through this life once, you don’t come back for an encore.” — Elvis Presley
117. “In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.” — Anne Frank
118. “You’re not defined by your past; you’re prepared by it. You’re stronger, more experienced, and you have greater confidence.” — Joel Osteen
119. “We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” — Jimmy Carter
120. “Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.” — Seneca
121. “Once you figure out who you are and what you love about yourself, I think it all kinda falls into place.” — Jennifer Aniston
122. “Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby.” — George Bernard Shaw
123. “Just disconnect. Once in a day sometime, sit silently and from all connections disconnect yourself.” — Yoda (Star Wars Quotes)
124. “Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life.” — Buddha
125. “Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully.” — Albert Camus
126. “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” — Oprah Winfrey
127. “Your image isn’t your character. Character is what you are as a person.” — Derek Jeter
128. “Football is like life, it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.” —Vince Lombardi
129. “As you know, life is an echo; we get what we give.” — David DeNotaris
130. “There are no regrets in life, just lessons.” — Jennifer Aniston
131. “I believe that nothing in life is unimportant every moment can be a beginning.” — John McLeod
132. “Find people who will make you better.” — Michelle Obama
133. “As my knowledge of things grew I felt more and more the delight of the world I was in.” — Helen Keller
134. “Benjamin Franklin was a humanitarian that dedicated his life to making contributions to all humans. He had a clear purpose for himself: improve the human race.” — Paulo Braga
135. “You cannot control everything that happens to you; you can only control the way you respond to what happens. In your response is your power.” — Anonymous
136. “Don’t allow your past or present condition to control you. It’s just a process that you’re going through to get you to the next level.” – T.D. Jakes
137. “You will meet two kinds of people in life: ones who build you up and ones who tear you down. But in the end, you’ll thank them both.” — Anonymous
138. “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” – Maya Angelou
139. “If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.” – Gail Sheehy
140. “You choose the life you live. If you don’t like it, it’s on you to change it because no one else is going to do it for you.” – Kim Kiyosaki
141. “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously, that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case you fail by default.” — Anonymous
142. “Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.
143. “The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.” – Doctor Who
144. “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” – Vivian Greene
145. “I enjoy life when things are happening. I don’t care if it’s good things or bad things. That means you’re alive.” – Joan Rivers
146. “There’s more to life than basketball. The most important thing is your family and taking care of each other and loving each other no matter what.” – Stephen Curry
147. “Today, you have 100% of your life left.” – Tom Landry (Football Quotes)
148. “Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” – George Halas
149. “Make each day your masterpiece.” – John Wooden
150. “You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.” – Michael Phelps
3. Sở thú bị cháy, đố bạn con gì chạy ra đầu tiên?
Đáp án: Con người.
4. Câu đố mẹo có đáp án: Một con hổ bị xích vào gốc cây, sợi xích dài 30m. Có 1 bụi cỏ cách gốc cây 31m, đố bạn làm sao con hổ ăn được bụi cỏ?
Đáp án: Con hổ không ăn cỏ.
5. Mỗi năm có bảy tháng 31 ngày. Đố bạn có bao nhiêu tháng có 28 ngày?
Đáp án: 12 tháng.
6. Nhà Nam có 4 anh chị em, 3 người lớn tên là Xuân, Hạ, Thu. Đố bạn người em út tên gì?
Đáp án: Người em út tên Nam
7. Đố bạn khi Beckham thực hiện quả đá phạt đền, anh ta sẽ sút vào đâu?
Đáp án: Anh ta sẽ sút vào bóng
8. Một ly thuỷ tinh đựng đầy nước, làm thế nào để lấy nước dưới đáy ly mà không đổ nước ra ngoài ?
Đáp án: Ống hút
9. Đố bạn có bao nhiêu chữ C trong câu sau đây: “ Cơm, canh, cháo gì tớ cũng thích ăn!” .
Đáp án: 1 chữ C.
10. Biển nào nhỏ nhất?
Đáp án: Biển số nhà, biển số xe.
11. Cầm trên tay một cây thước và một cây bút , làm thế nào để bạn vẽ được một vòng tròn thật chính xác?
Đáp án: Bỏ cây thước đi và cầm compa lên để vẽ.
12. Cái gì tay trái cầm được còn tay phải có muốn cầm cũng không được?
Đáp án: Rờ cùi chỏ tay phải.
13. Tại sao khi bắn súng người ta lại nhắm một mắt?
Đáp án: Bạn thấy ai nhắm 2 mắt bắn súng chưa?
14. Với con người, thời điểm tốt nhất để đi ngủ là khi nào?
Đáp án: Là khi buồn ngủ.
15. Từ nào trong tiếng Việt có chín mẫu tự h?
Đáp án: Chính.
16. Bạn thử chứng minh”Ba n = Bốn với mọi n” thử xem nào?
Đáp án: Ba + n = Bố + n.
17. Bạn đang ở trong một cuộc đua và bạn vừa vượt qua người thứ nhì . Vậy bây giờ bạn đang ở vị trí nào trong đoàn đua ấy?
Đáp án: Thứ nhì.
18. Cũng trong một cuộc đua, bạn vừa chạy qua người cuối cùng. Vậy bạn đang ở vị trí nào?
Đáp án: Cuối cùng.
19. Câu đố mẹo có đáp án: Con mèo nào cực kỳ sợ chuột?
Đáp án: Doremon
20. Có con chuột lại cực kỳ sợ mèo. Con chuột nào vậy?
Đáp án: Con nào cũng sợ
21. Người đàn ông duy nhất trên thế giới có…sữa là ai?
Đáp án: Ông Thọ.
22. Cái gì có kích thước bằng con voi nhưng chẳng nặng gram nào cả?
Đáp án: Bóng con voi.
23. Câu đố mẹo có đáp án: Con mèo có gì mà không bất kỳ con vật nào có?
Đáp án: Tiếng kêu với đẻ mèo con.
24. Tôi có cả một hàm răng nhưng không có cái miệng nào cả? Tôi là ai?
Đáp án: Dao chặt được đá, cây cưa, bồ cào…
25. Làm thế nào để con cua được chính chân?
Đáp án: luộc.
26. A gọi B bằng bác, B gọi C là ông nội , C kêu D là cậu, D kêu E là dì, E kêu F là chú, F gọi Z là con. Hỏi A gọi Z bằng gì ?
Đáp án: Gọi bằng mồm.
27. Câu đố mẹo có đáp án: Bức tranh nàng Mônalisa, người đẹp này không có gì?
Đáp án: Không có chân mày.
28. Có ba quả táo trên bàn và bạn lấy đi hai quả. Hỏi bạn còn bao nhiêu quả táo?
Đáp án: 2 quả.
29. Bố mẹ có sáu người con trai, mỗi người con trai có một em gái. Hỏi gia đình đó có bao nhiêu người?
Đáp án: 9 người.
30. Nếu chỉ có một que diêm, trong một ngày mùa đông giá rét, bạn bước vào căn phòng có một cây đèn, một bếp dầu, và một bếp củi, bạn thắp gì trước tiên?
Đáp án: que diêm
31. Khi nhắc đến cối xay gió, người ta thường nghĩ đến đất nước nào?
Đáp án: Hà Lan.
32. Bán cái gì chỉ cần 4 bên đại diện?
Đáp án: Bán kết.
33. Bông nào biết nói?
Đáp án: Bông Hậu.
34. Câu đố mẹo có đáp án: Một kẻ giết người bị kết án tử hình. Hắn ta phải chọn một trong ba căn phòng: phòng thứ nhất lửa cháy dữ dội, phòng thứ hai đầy những kẻ ám sát đang giương súng, và phòng thứ ba đầy sư tử nhịn đói trong ba năm. Phòng nào an toàn nhất cho hắn?
Đáp án: Sư tử chết đói rồi
35. Cái gì đen khi bạn mua nó, đỏ khi dùng nó và xám xịt khi vứt nó đi?
Đáp án: Than
36. Bạn có thể kể ra ba ngày liên tiếp mà không có tên là thứ hai, thứ ba, thứ tư, thứ năm, thứ sáu, thứ bảy, chủ nhật?
Đáp án: Hôm qua, hôm nay, ngày mai, ngày mốt, ngay kia, ngày nọ
37. Toà nhà lớn nhất thế giới?
Đáp án: Nhà nước.
38. Tháng nào ngắn nhất trong năm?
Đáp án: Ba, tư
39. Câu hỏi nào mà bạn phải trả lời “có”?
Đáp án: Đánh vần chữ có
40. Loài chó nào nhảy cao bằng toà nhà cao nhất thế giới?
Đáp án: Tất cả các loài vì nhà ko biết nhảy.
41. Ai có nhà di động đầu tiên?
Đáp án: Rùa và ốc sên
42. Tại sao sư tử ăn thịt sống?
Đáp án: Không biết nấu chín
43. Câu đố mẹo có đáp án: Con gì còn đau khổ hơn hươu cao cổ bị viêm họng?
Đáp án: Con rết bị đau chân
44. Một phụ nữ đang mua đồ tại tiệm ngũ kim. Người bán hàng chào giá: “Giá của một là mười hai xu, giá của bốn mươi tư là hai mươi tư xu, và giá của một trăm mười bốn là ba mươi sáu xu.”! Cô ta muốn mua gì vậy ta?
Đáp án: Mua số nhà
45. Có cổ nhưng không có miệng là gì?
Đáp án: Cái áo
46. Tôi luôn mang giày đi ngủ. Tôi là ai?
Đáp án: Con ngựa
47. Bạn làm việc gì đầu tiên mỗi buổi sáng?
Đáp án: Mở mắt
48. Tôi chu du khắp thế giới mà tôi vẫn ở nguyên một chỗ, tôi là ai?
Đáp án: Con Tem
49. Hai con chó đang lang thang ở công viên. Con chó trắng tên Đen, con chó đen tên Trắng. Nam thấy chúng dễ thương, liền thẩy trái banh ra xa rồi ra lệnh “Đen, đi lượm trái banh”… Đố bạn con chó nào sẽ đi lượm?
Đáp án: Nam sẽ lượm dép chạy ko kịp vì Nam ứ phải chủ của chúng.
50. Hai người một lớn, một bé đi lên đỉnh một quả núi. Người bé là con của người lớn, nhưng người lớn lại không phải cha của người bé, hỏi người lớn là ai?
Đáp án: Mẹ
51. Bạn có “chiêu” nào để có thể thức trắng 7 ngày mà vẫn không thiếu ngủ?
Đáp án: Ngủ đêm
52. Tôi có 4 cái chân, 1 cái lưng, nhưng không có cơ thể. Tôi là ai?
Đáp án: Cái ghế
53. Heo nào có cả thịt lẫn mỡ?
Đáp án: Heo thật, heo ăn thịt.
54. Tại sao 30 người đàn ông và 2 người đàn bà đánh nhau tán loạn?
Đáp án: Đánh cờ.
55. Có 1 người muốn làm quen với 1 cô gái, liền chạy lại hỏi tên, cô gái nói: Anh hãy đếm xem trong giỏ có bao nhiêu cây bắp thì khắc biết tên tôi. Người có đếm được 12 cây bắp, hỏi cô gái đó tên gì?
Đáp án: Tố Nga (12 cây bắp = tá ngô, đọc ngược lại là tố nga)
56. Có 1 cô gái người ta thường gọi là tam giác , hỏi cô gái đó tên gì?
Đáp án: Thanh Kiều
57. Bệnh gì bác sỹ bó tay?
Đáp án: Đó là bệnh… gãy tay!
58. Con chó đen người ta gọi là con chó mực. Con chó vàng, người ta gọi là con chó phèn. Con chó sanh người ta gọi là con chó đẻ. Vậy con chó đỏ, ng ta gọi là con chó gì?
Đáp án: Con chó đỏ người ta gọi là con chó… đỏ.
59. Bà đó bà chết bả bay lên trời. Hỏi bà ấy chết năm bao nhiêu tuổi và tại sao bà ấy chết?
Đáp án: bà đó là bò đá —> bò đá bả chết, bả bay là bảy ba–> bà ấy chết năm bà ấy 73 tuổi!
60. Có 1 đàn chim đậu trên cành, người thợ săn bắn cái rằm. Hỏi chết mấy con?
Đáp án: Rằm là 15 —> chết 15 con
61. Con gì ăn lửa với nước than?
Đáp án: Đó là con tàu.
62. Có 1 chiếc thuyền tối đa là chỉ chở dc hai người, nếu thêm ng thứ 3 sẽ bị chìm ngay lập tức. Hỏi tại sao ng ta trông thấy trên chiếc thuyền đó có ba thằng mỹ đen và ba thằng mỹ trắng ngồi trên chiếc thuyền đó mà ko bị chìm?
Đáp án: bởi vì trên chiếc thuyền đó sự thật là có đúng 2 người đi. Đó là ba của thằng mỹ đen và ba của thằng mỹ trắng!!
63. Nắng ba năm tôi không bỏ bạn, mưa 1 ngày sao bạn lại bỏ tôi là cái gì?
Đáp án: Đó lả cái bóng của mình!
64. Trên nhấp dưới giật là đang làm gì?
Đáp án: Đó là đang câu cá!
65. Con gấu trúc ao ước gì mà không bao giờ được?
Đáp án: Vì gấu trúc chỉ có 2 màu trắng đen nên nó ao ước được chụp hình màu – vậy mà hem thể được vì chụp cỡ nào cũng chỉ có trắng đen mùh thôi!
66. Tay cầm cục thịt nắn nắn, tay vỗ mông là đang làm gì?
Đáp án: Đó là bà mẹ đang cho con bú!
67. Cái gì bằng cái vung, vùng xuống ao. Đào chẳng thấy, lấy chẳng được?
Đáp án: Đó là mặt trăng!
68. Con trai và đàn ong có điểm gì khác nhau?
Đáp án: Con trai là con vật sống dưới nước, còn đàn ong sống trên cây!
69. Cái gì trong trắng ngoài xanh trồng đậu trồng hành rồi thả heo vào?
Đáp án: Bánh chưng
70. Cắm vào run rẩy toàn thân
Rút ra nước chảy từ chân xuống sàn
Hỡi chàng công tử giàu sang
Cắm vào xin chớ vội vàng rút ra!
Đáp án: Đó là cái tủ lạnh!
71. Con gì mang được miếng gỗ lớn nhưng không mang được hòn sỏi?
Đáp án: Con sông
72. Ở Việt Nam, rồng bay ở đâu và đáp ở đâu?
Đáp án: Rồng bay ở Thăng Long và đáp ở Hạ Long!
73. Có 1 người đứng ở chân cầu. Ở giữa cầu có một con gấu rất hung dữ ko cho ai qua cầu hết. Ng đó sẽ mất hết 5 phút để đi từ chân cầu cho đến giữa cầu và con gấu cũng chỉ ngủ có 5 phút là tỉnh dậy. Hỏi ng đó làm sao để qua dc bên kia?
Đáp án: Đi đến giữa cầu và quay mặt ngược lại. Con gấu thức dậy tưởng người đó từ bên kia qua nên rượt trở lại. Thế là ng đó đã qua dc cầu!
74. Ở Việt Nam, một thằng mù và ba thằng điếc đi ăn phở, mỗi người ăn một tô. Mỗi tô phở là 10 ngàn đồng. Hỏi ăn xong họ phải trả bao nhiêu tiền?
Đáp án: Họ phải trả 20 ngàn đồng vì 1 thằng mù và ba của thằng điếc là 2 người ăn!
75. Where does today come before yesterday?
(Ở nơi nào hôm nay đi trước hôm qua?)
Đáp án: in a dictionary.
76. What is between the sky and earth?
( Cái gì ở giữa bầu trời và trái đất?)
Đáp án: And (và)
77. A man is walking in raining. His head, eyes, noses, lips are wet, but his hair is not wet. Why?
( Một ng đàn ông đi trong trời mưa. Đầu, mắt, mũi, miệng ông ta đều bị ướt nhưng tóc ông ta ko hề bị ướt? Hỏi tại sao?)
Đáp án: He’s bald (ông ta bị trọc đầu)
78. Giả sử ta có 1 khúc vải, cắt nó ra làm 100 khúc, thời gian để cắt 1 khúc vải là 5 giây. Hỏi nếu cắt liên tục không ngừng nghỉ thì trong bao lâu sẽ cắt xong???
Đáp án: 495 giây bởi vì 99 khúc (khúc cuối cùng không phải cắt) X 5 giây = 495 giây!
79. Ở một xứ nọ, có luật lệ rằng: Ai muốn diện kiến nhà vua thì phải nói một câu. Nếu câu nói thật thì sẽ bị chém đầu, còn nếu là dối thì bị treo cổ. Vậy để gặp được nhà vua của xứ đó, ta phải nói như thế nào?
Đáp án: Để gặp được nhà vua, người đó phải nói “tôi sẽ bị treo cổ!”.
80. Nơi nào có đường xá, nhưng không có xe cộ; có nhà ở, nhưng không có người; có siêu thị, công ty… nhưng không có hàng hóa… Đó là nơi nào vậy??!!
Đáp án: Ở bản đồ!
81. Có một rổ táo, trong rổ có ba quả, làm sao để chia cho 3 người, mỗi người một quả mà vẫn còn một quả trong rổ???
Đáp án: Thì đưa cho 2 người đầu mỗi người 1 quả. Còn 1 quả trong rổ đưa nguyên cả cái rổ đựng quả táo cho người còn lại thì 3 người mỗi ng đều có 1 quả và cũng có 1 quả trong rổ.!
82. Có một cây lê có 2 cành, mỗi cành có 2 nhánh lớn, mỗi nhánh lớn có 2 nhánh nhỏ, mỗi nhánh nhò có hai cái lá, cạnh mỗi cái lá có hai quả. Hỏi trên cây đó có mấy quả táo???
Đáp án: Không có quả táo nào vì lê không thể ra quả táo nào trên cây được.
83. Có 3 thằng lùn xếp hàng dọc đi vào hang. Thằng đi sau cầm 1 cái xô, thằng đi giữa cầm 1 cái xẻng, hỏi thằng đi trước cầm gì?
Đáp án: Thằng đó “cầm đầu” tức là đại ca cầm đầu, nó ko phải cầm cái vật gì hết!
84. Cô nào mà tất cả mọi người đều sợ không chỉ học sinh?Đáp án: Corona (Cô rô na)85. Con gì có mũi mà không có mắt, có lưỡi mà không có miệng?Đáp án: Con dao86. Kết thúc câu chuyện “Cây tre trăm đốt”, anh Khoai bay lên trời bằng gì?Đáp án: Anh Khoai không bay lên trời.87. Cái gì 2 lỗ: có gió thì sống, không gió thì chết?Đáp án: Lỗ mũi88. Con gì không có xương sống mà vẫn đứng được?Đáp án: Con dốc89. Xe nào không bao giờ giảm đi?Đáp án: Xe tăng90. Ba con gà có tất cả bao nhiêu cái răng?Đáp án: Gà không có răng91. Con gì sinh ra đã được làm vua?Đáp án: Con cua hoàng đế92. Nhà nào lạnh lẽo nhưng ai cũng muốn tới?Đáp án: Nhà băng93. Bông gì không mọc từ cây?Đáp án: Bông tai94. Môn thể thao nào có cả vua lẫn hoàng hậu?Đáp án: Cờ vua95. Loại xe không có bánh thường thấy ở đâu?Đáp án: Trong bàn cờ vua96. Kiến nào không bao giờ ngủ?Đáp án: Kiến thức97. Quả gì ai cũng sợ ăn trúng?Đáp án: Quả báo98. Bức tường nào dài nhất thế giới?Đáp án: Vạn lý trường thành99. Đồng gì mà đa số ai cũng thích?Đáp án: Đồng tiền100. Cái gì không có chân, không có đuôi, không có cơ thể mà có nhiều đầu?Đáp án: Cầu truyền hình101. Con gì không có xương sống mà vẫn đứng được?Đáp án: Con dốc102. Bánh gì mang tên loài vật?Đáp án: Bánh sừng trâu103. Ốc gì to nhất?Đáp án: Ốc đảo104. Cái gì càng cất lại càng thấy?Đáp án: Cất nhà105. Cái gì càng thiu lại càng ngon?Đáp án: Giấc ngủ106. Con gì dài và cứng nhất?Đáp án: Con đường107. Con gì sinh ra đạo đức đã không tốt?Đáp án: Con lừa108. Bánh gì ăn ít mà nhiều?Đáp án: Bánh đa109. Con gì có cánh mà không có lông?Đáp án: Con diều110. Cái gì tay phải cầm được mà tay trái cầm không được?Đáp án: Cái cánh tay trái111. Kim gì nhiều người thích nhất?Đáp án: Kim tiền, kim cương112. Kim gì trẻ em thường sợ nhất?Đáp án: Kim chích113. Con người có thể nhìn thấy được biển nhiều nhất ở đâu?Đáp án: Trên tấm bản đồ hoặc quả địa cầu114. Trò gì 5 bé hơn 2, 2 bé hơn 0 và 0 bé hơn 5?Đáp án: Oằn tù xì115. Trái gì không hái được nhưng rất dễ tan vỡ?Đáp án: Trái tim116. Cô bé quàng khăn đỏ đội nón màu gì?Đáp án: Cô bé không đội nón
117. Một con gà trống và một con gà mái thi nhau bơi qua sông, hỏi con nào đến đích trước?
Đáp án: Không con nào vì gà không bơi được
118. Phía trước bạn là quảng trường xanh, sau lưng bạn là quảng trường trắng, vậy quảng trường đỏ ở đâu?
Đáp án: Ở Nga
119. Tốc độ quy định tối đa của một vận động viên trong cuộc thi chạy marathon là bao nhiêu?
Đáp án: Không có quy định, chạy càng nhanh càng tốt
120. Ngày tháng mười chưa cười đã tối. Đêm tháng mấy chưa nằm đã sáng?
Đáp án: Tháng năm
121. Vào tháng nào con người sẽ ngủ ít nhất trong năm?
Đáp án: Tháng 2 (vì tháng 2 có 28 ngày)
122. Khi nào chúng ta nhìn vào số 2 nhưng lại nói là 10?
Đáp án: Khi nhìn vào đồng hồ
123. Như bạn biết, 5 chia cho 5 thì bằng 1. Nếu bạn Tí có 5 cục kẹo chia đều cho 5 người bạn của mình, thì bạn Tí còn mấy cục kẹo?
Đáp án: Không còn cục nào cả
124. Ngày đầu tiên đi học, Lan đọc hết 2 quyển sách, ngày kế tiếp mẹ cho 9 quyển sách và Lan mỗi ngày đọc 1 quyển sách. Vậy tới hết ngày thứ 7 thì Lan đọc được bao nhiêu quyển sách?
Đáp án: 8 quyển sách
125. Trên thon dưới phồng – Đầu đỗi nón đồng khi sáng khi tối. Là gì?
Đáp án: Bóng đèn.
126. Trên vì nước dưới vì nhà – Lòng nầy ai tỏ cho ra nỗi lòng. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái máng xối.
Câu 127. Tròn như lá tía tô – Đông tây nam bắc đi mô cũng về
Đáp án: Cái nón.
Câu 128. Tròn như mặt trăng. Là gì?
Đáp án: Bánh xèo.
Câu 129. Tròn tròn ngửa ngửa nghiêng nghiêng – Nhỏ mà chẳng chịu tu riêng như người. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái chung.
Câu 130. Tròn tròn như lá tía tô – Lội xuống ao hồ, đầu ướt, đuôi khô. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái muỗng (thìa).
Câu 131. Tròn tròn như lá tía tô (2) – Bước cẳng vô hồ trong khô ngoài ướt. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái gáo.
Câu 132. Lồm xồm 2 mép những lông – Ở giữa có lỗ đàn ông chui vào – Chui vào rồi lại chui ra – Năm thì mười họa đàn bà mới chui – Là cái gì?
Đáp án: Cái áo mưa ngày xưa.
Câu 133. Trên lông dưới lông – Tối lồng vào nhau – Là gì?
Đáp án: Đôi mắt.
Câu 134. Trên bằng da dưới cũng bằng da – Đút vào thì ấm rút ra lạnh lùng – Là gì?
Đáp án: Đôi giầy.
Câu 135. Cái gì của chồng mà vợ thích cầm nhất (không nghĩ lung tung)? Là gì?
Đáp án: Tiền.
136. Con trai có gì quí nhất?
Đáp án: Ngọc trai.
137. Cơ quan quan trọng nhất của phụ nữ là gì?
Đáp án: Hội Liên Hiệp Phụ Nữ.
138. Một tay nắm tóc, một tay nhét vào lỗ, sọc sọc sọc… Con này to thật, con này bé quá, nông quá chả có gì, sâu quá mãi không ra… Là hành động gì?
Đáp án: Bắt cua.
139.
Hai cô ra tắm một dòng
Cởi áo tắm trần để lộ màu da
Một cô da trắng như ngà
Một cô lại có màu da đỏ hồng
Giữa cơn nắng hạ oi nồng
Quần rơi trễ xuống, lộ mông dậy thì
Cùng là hai bạn nữ nhi
Cớ sao lại thấy rậm rì râu ria?
Là gì?
Đáp án: Hoa sen và hoa súng.
140. Có đầu mà chẳng có đuôi – Có một khúc giữa cứng ruôi lại mềm. Là gì?
Đáp án: Đòn gánh.
141. Năm thằng vác Nở đi chôn – Chưa ra đến cửa vách lồ… ra xem. Là gì?
Đáp án: Con rùa.
142.
Thân em là gái xuân xanh
Cớ sao anh lại đem phanh giữa trời
Mỗi người một nước một nơi
Em thì nằm dưới, anh ngồi lên trên
Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái chiếu.
143. Ông nằm dưới trỏ ngóc lên – Bà nằm trên rên hừ hừ. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cối xay lúa.
144.
Lòng em cay đắng quanh năm
Khi ngồi, khi đứng, khi nằm nghênh ngang
Các anh các bác trong làng
Gặp em thì lại vội vàng nâng niu
Vắng em đau khổ trăm chiều
Tuy rằng cay đắng nhưng nhiều người mê
Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái điếu cày.
145.
Ngồi banh ba góc
Tay thục liên hồi
Lỗ trống thiệt sâu
Rút ra đỏ đầu
Hai người đập chát
Là gì?
Đáp án: Thợ rèn.
146.
Xiên xiên ba góc xéo cả ba
Ở dưới thiếu một miếng da
Phành ra ba góc da còn thiếu
Khép lại đôi bên thịt vẫn thừa
Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái quạt giấy.
147. Để yên âu nằm im thin thít – Hể động liếm đít, chạy tứ tung. Là gì?
Đáp án: Con tem.
148.
Dài dài như trái chuối tây
Một đầu cứng ngắc, đầu đầy lông quăn
Gặm hoài bà xái cả cằm
Mỏi mồm, ướt mép, tay cầm, tay lau. Là gì?
Đáp án: Bắp ngô.
149.
Thân anh trùng trục trơn lu
Mấy em mút đến anh trào nước ra
Càng mút càng thấy đã người
Mút anh hết sái xương thời lòi ra – Là gì?
Đáp án: Que kem.
150.
Đút vào nhè nhẹ ngoáy nghe anh!
Cho em tê mê tận mây xanh
Lâu lâu đôi mình mới có độ
Đừng để em ngứa… suốt năm canh! Là gì?
Đáp án: Ngoáy lỗ tai.
151. Cầu Mống (ở quận 1 thành phố Hồ Chí Minh) hiện giờ có màu gì?
Đáp án: Màu xanh.
152. Cầu Mống dài 128 mét, một người đi xe máy chạy với vận tốc 40 km/h, hỏi bao lâu thì đi hết cây cầu đó?
Đáp án: Trên cầu không được chạy xe máy.
153. Cầu Mống bắc qua kênh gì?
Đáp án: Kênh Bến Nghé.
154. Xanh xanh đỏ đỏ vàng vàng
Bắc cầu Thiên Lý nằm ngang một mình.
Đó là cái gì?
Đáp án: Cầu vồng.
155. Cầu vồng do hiện tượng gì tạo nên?
Đáp án: Hiện tượng khúc xạ ánh sáng.
156. Tại sao siêu nhân là con gái nhưng vẫn gọi là 5 anh em siêu nhân mà không phải là 5 chị em siêu nhân?
Đáp án: Vì siêu nhân lớn nhất là con trai => gọi là 5 anh em.
157. Xe gì càng vô (vào) ga càng đi chậm?
Đáp án: Xe lửa (tàu hỏa) vì “vô ga” = vào nhà ga.
158. Khi đi vào đường cấm, xe A xin xe B nhường đường, xe B cũng xin xe A nhường đường, hỏi kết quả thế nào?
Đáp án: Vì là đường cấm => không được đi xe.
159. Cái gì có lắm chân tay
Đuôi thì chẳng thấy, mà có hai đầu?
Đáp án: Cây cầu.
160. Cái gì không có chân, không có đuôi, không có cơ thể mà có nhiều đầu?
Đáp án: Cầu truyền hình.
161. Tên thân mật của ca sĩ Lam Trường là anh Hai, ca sĩ Cẩm Ly là chị Tư, vậy ca sĩ Đan Trường là anh Ba Khía đúng hay sai?
Đáp án: Sai (Vì Đan Trường có tên gọi khác là anh Bo).
162. Hãy chỉ ra 1 từ trong tiếng Việt khi bỏ đi dấu huyền thì vẫn giữ nguyên nghĩa của nó.
Đáp án: lờ – lơ (không để ý đến mình).
163. Mới dùng thì nắc xom xom – Đến khi dùng chán om xòm mình em – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái nơm úp cá.
164. Công nhân, công lí, công tâm, công bằng trong các từ trên từ nào không cùng nhóm?
Đáp án: Công nhân.
165. Xã nào đông dân nhất?
Đáp án: Xã hội.
166 . Con đường nào dài nhất?
Đáp án: Đường đời.
167. Trèo lên, anh nhún, em kêu – Nhún no nhún chán, anh khều nó ra – Là làm gì?
Đáp án: Mở khóa.
168. Đôi ta vui thú cuộc chơi – Những nước là nước cứ tòi mãi ra – Là gì?
Đáp án: Chơi cờ.
169. Hai lưng song sóng – Hai họng ấp nhau – Nháu nhàu nhàu – Dí một cái – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái kéo.
170. Hai chân mà đứng dạng ra – Cái gì ở giữa đố bà con hay? Là cái gì?
Đáp án: Cái đầu gối.
171. Mặt có, không mồm – Rậm rì hai mép lồm xồm những lông – Là cái gì?
Đáp án: Cái áo mưa ngày xưa hay dùng.
172. Trong lông ngoài nhẵn như chùi – Khúc thịt ở giữa có mùi… thơm thơm – Là gì?
Đáp án: Quả xoài.
173. Một khúc cứng ngắc như lim – Nhấp nhô anh đóng vút chìm vào em – Là làm gì?
Đáp án: Giã gạo.
174. Lột áo quần ra – Khi trần như nhộng thì ta đút vào – Đút vào mới sướng làm sao – Rập lên rập xuống nó trào nước ra – Là gì?
Đáp án: Ăn mía.
175. Bé thì đặc bí bì bì – Đến lúc đương thì rỗng toách toành toanh – Là gì?
Đáp án: Quả mướp.
176. Yêu nhau nên “thả” vào nhau – Lúc đầu tuy đau, khi ra rồi… sướng – Là làm gì?
Đáp án: Lấy kim nhổ gai.
177. Cù rù, củ rũ, cù rù – Khen ai lót ổ cho cu hắn nằm – Khắp người hắn mọc đầy lông – Nằm chơi chẳng đặng, phơi lông ra ngoài – Là gì?
Đáp án: Bắp ngô.
178. Mình chừng năm tấc cao
Hoa trắng với hoa đào
Kẻ thô tục đâm năm bảy cái
Gái thanh tân ta đút ngay vào – Là gì?
Đáp án: Hoa cỏ may.
Câu 179. 1′ => 4 = 1505 có nghĩa là gì?
Đáp án: 1 phút suy tư bằng 1 năm không ngủ.
Câu 180. Bánh gì mang tên loài vật?
Đáp án: Bánh sừng trâu.
Câu 181. Ốc gì to nhất?
Đáp án: Ốc đảo.
Câu 182. Cái gì càng cất lại càng thấy?
Đáp án: Cất nhà.
Câu 183. Cái gì càng thiu lại càng ngon?
Đáp án: Giấc ngủ.
Câu 184. Con gì dài và cứng nhất?
Đáp án: Con đường.
Câu 185. Núi nào mà chặt ra từng khúc?
Đáp án: Thái Sơn.
Câu 186. Bánh gì ăn ít mà nhiều?
Đáp án: Bánh đa.
Câu 187. Con gì có cánh mà không có lông?
Đáp án: Con diều.
Câu 188. Cái gì tay phải cầm được mà tay trái cầm không được?
Đáp án: Cái cánh tay trái.
Câu 189. Con gì đập thì sống, mà không đập thì chết?
Đáp án: Con tim.
Câu 190. Kim gì trẻ em thường sợ nhất?
Đáp án: Kim chích.
Câu 191. Con người có thể nhìn thấy được biển nhiều nhất ở đâu?
Đáp án: Trên tấm bản đồ hoặc quả địa cầu.
Câu 192. Có 1 đàn chuột điếc đi ngang qua tao, hỏi đàn chuột này có mấy con?
Đáp án: Điếc là hư tai, hư tai là hai tư (24).
Câu 193. Trái gì không hái được nhưng rất dễ tan vỡ?
Đáp án: Trái tim.
Câu 194. Cô bé quàng khăn đỏ đội nón màu gì?
Đáp án: Cô bé không đội nón.
195. Chồng của mẹ mình là ai?
Đáp án: Ba/ bố/ tía mình.
196.
Mẹ đi chợ mua 5 trái bưởi và 5 trái cam con ăn mất 2 trái cam. Hỏi còn mấy trái bưởi?
Đáp án: 5 trái vì không ăn bưởi.
197.
Ngồi banh ba góc – Tay thục liên hồi – Lỗ trống thiệt sâu – Rút ra đỏ đầu – Hai người đập chát – Là gì?
Đáp án: Thợ rèn.
198. Xiên xiên ba góc xéo cả ba – Ở dưới thiếu một miếng da – Phành ra ba góc da còn thiếu – Khép lại đôi bên thịt vẫn thừa – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái quạt giấy.
199. Có 1 con trâu. Đầu nó thì hướng về hướng mặt trời mọc, nó quay trái 2 vòng sau đó quay ngược lại sau đó lại quay phải hai vòng hỏi cái đuôi của nó chỉ hướng nào?
Đáp án: Hướng xuống đất
200.
Đố mọi người có vật gì mà có thể giúp chúng ta nhìn thẳng qua tường dễ dàng?
Đáp án: Cái cửa sổ.
201. Con gì không gáy ò ó o mà người ta vẫn gọi là gà?
Đáp án: Gà con và gà mái.
202. Cày trên đồng ruộng trắng phau – Khát xuống uống nước giếng sâu đen ngòm. Đố là cái gì?
Đáp án: Cây bút mực.
203. Vừa bằng bàn tay – Thịt da phơi bày – Khép nép bờ khe – Anh hùng banh nhẹ – Nhét vô sung sướng – Rút ra vấn vương. – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái ví tiền.
204. Lò mò tìm thấy lỗ – Loáy hoáy nhét vội vô – Lúc lắc chờ em rên – Rút ra, ôi! tới bến. Là gì?
Êm êm, ấm ấm ta trào nước ra – Vô thư viện, chế chung trà – Mời người tục… hữu, hỏi là cái chi chi?
Đáp án: Cái phin pha cà phê.
206. Mình tròn vành vạnh, đít bảnh bao
Mân mân mó mó đút ngay vào
Thủy hỏa tương giao sôi sùng sục
Âm dương nhị khí sướng làm sao
Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái điếu bát.
207. Ông nằm dưới, bà nằm trên – Ông dướn người lên, bà rên ừ ừ… Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái cối xay.
208. Nhấp nhấp trên – Nhấp nhấp dưới – Dưới nhấp trên sướng – Trên nhấp dưới đau – Rút ra chảy máu – Là gì?
Đáp án: Câu cá.
209. Bốn chân chong chóng – Hai bụng kề nhau – Cắm giữa phao câu – Nghiến đi nghiến lại – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cối xay.
210. Mình trần cao lớn trượng phu – Đóng mười lần khố, trật cu ra ngoài – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cây chuối trổ buồng.
211. Con trai có gì quý nhất?
Đáp án: Ngọc trai.
212. Con gì có mũi mà không có mắt, có lưỡi mà không có miệng?
Đáp án: Con dao.
213. Cơ quan quan trọng nhất của phụ nữ là gì ?
Đáp án: Hội Liên Hiệp Phụ Nữ.
214. Khi Beckham thực hiện quả đá PENALTY, anh ta sẽ sút vào đâu?
Đáp án: Trái banh.
215. Thân em vừa trắng lại vừa mềm – Vừa bàn tay úp – Anh mà miết lên miết xuống là nó tiết nhớt ra
Đáp án: Bánh xà phòng.
216. Xe nào không bao giờ giảm đi?
Đáp án: Xe tăng.
217. Ba con gà có tất cả bao nhiêu cái răng?
Đáp án: Gà không có răng.
Câu 218. Bệnh nào mang tên từ 3 bộ phận cơ thể trở lên?
Đáp án: Tay – Chân – Miệng.
Câu 219. Nhà nào lạnh lẽo nhưng ai cũng muốn tới?
Đáp án: Nhà băng.
220. Bông gì không mọc từ cây?
Đáp án: Bông tai.
221. Môn thể thao nào có cả vua lẫn hoàng hậu?
Đáp án: Cờ vua.
222. Loại xe không có bánh thường thấy ở đâu?
Đáp án: Trong bàn cờ vua.
223. Kiến nào không bao giờ ngủ?
Đáp án: Kiến thức.
224. Quả gì ai cũng sợ ăn trúng?
Đáp án: Quả báo.
225. Bức tường nào dài nhất thế giới?
Đáp án: Vạn lý trường thành.
226. Đồng gì mà đa số ai cũng thích?
Đáp án: Đồng tiền.
227. Cái gì không có chân, không có đuôi, không có cơ thể mà có nhiều đầu?
Đáp án: Cầu truyền hình.
228. Người ta phát hiện ra xác chết của một chàng trai treo cổ chết ở nóc nhà. Dưới chân cậu ta cách khoảng 20 cm đến sàn nhà là một vũng nước lớn. Hỏi cậu ta làm sao để có thể leo lên nóc nhà mà tự tử được?
Đáp án: Đứng lên tảng nước đá.
229. Chàng thời coi thiếp là ai
Chàng buồn chàng lại đút hoài không tha
Hết buồn chàng lại rút ra
Có ngày chàng đút tới ba bốn lần
Thiếp thì nổi tiếng cù lần
Chàng cần thì đút, hết cần thì thôi
Hằng ngày hàng tháng liên hồi
Có ngày thiếp cũng quy hồi nghĩa trang – Là gì?
Đáp án: Đầu video.
230. Nâng em lên
Đặt em xuống
Dạng chân ra
Tha hồ mà bóp – Là gì?
Đáp án: Vác súng, đặt súng và bóp cò.
231. Cầu Mống (ở quận 1 thành phố Hồ Chí Minh) hiện giờ có màu gì?
Đáp án: Màu xanh.
232. Cầu Mống dài 128 mét, một người đi xe máy chạy với vận tốc 40 km/h, hỏi bao lâu thì đi hết cây cầu đó?
Đáp án: Trên cầu không được chạy xe máy.
233. Cầu Mống bắc qua kênh gì?
Đáp án: Kênh Bến Nghé.
234. Tết năm nay, bé Xuân 9 tuổi, anh trai bé Xuân 12 tuổi. Hỏi 5 năm sau anh trai bé Xuân sẽ hơn bé Xuân mấy tuổi?
Đáp án: 3 tuổi.
235. Cầu vồng do hiện tượng gì tạo nên?
Đáp án: Hiện tượng khúc xạ ánh sáng.
236. Dừa nào nghe tên đã thấy nóng?
Đáp án: Dừa lửa.
237. Xe gì càng vô (vào) ga càng đi chậm?
Đáp án: Xe lửa (tàu hỏa) vì “vô ga” = vào nhà ga.
238. Khi đi vào đường cấm, xe A xin xe B nhường đường, xe B cũng xin xe A nhường đường, hỏi kết quả thế nào?
Đáp án: Vì là đường cấm => không được đi xe.
239. Cái gì có lắm chân tay – Đuôi thì chẳng thấy, mà có hai đầu?
Đáp án: Cây cầu.
240. Cái gì không có chân, không có đuôi, không có cơ thể mà có nhiều đầu?
Đáp án: Cầu truyền hình.
241. Cá không ăn muối cá ươn, cá ăn muối thì thế nào?
Đáp án: Cá không ươn.
242. Hãy chỉ ra 1 từ trong tiếng Việt khi bỏ đi dấu huyền thì vẫn giữ nguyên nghĩa của nó.
Đáp án: Lờ – lơ (không để ý đến mình).
243. Sáng, chiều gương mặt hiền hòa
Giữa trưa bộ mặt chói lòa gắt gay
Đi đằng đông, về đằng tây
Hôm nào vắng mặt, trời mây tối mù?
(Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Mặt trời.
244. Khi xanh, khi trắng, khi hồng Chẳng thả dưới nước cũng bồng bềnh trôi? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Đám mây.
245. Mặt gì phẳng lặng nghênh ngang
Người đi muôn lối, dọc ngang phố phường?
(Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Mặt đất.
246. Không có cánh mà lại có đuôi
Những toan dọn cả bầu trời sạch trong (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Sao chổi.
247. Không có quả, chẳng có cây
Thế mà có hạt rụng đầy nơi nơi
Cỏ cây thấy rụng thì vui
Loài vật thấy rụng tìm nơi ẩn mình? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Hạt mưa.
248. Ngọn gì khi nhỏ, khi to – Khi hiền, khi ác ai đo thấu lòng – Thuận vui ai cũng bạn cùng – Nhỡ tay trái ý trăm rừng cũng tan? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Ngọn lửa.
249. Cái gì lỏng ở quanh đây – Nắng lên kết cánh mà bay về trời – Lạnh thì trở lại xuống chơi – Chờ khi gặp nóng tức thời bay lên? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Nước.
250. Tháng nào có tết thiếu nhi
Múa lân, ăn bánh lại đi rước đèn
Tháng nào có tết trung nguyên
Tháng nào thêm tuổi, thêm tiền bao phong?
(Đố là tháng nào?)
Đáp án: Tháng sáu, tháng tám âm lịch, tháng giêng âm lịch.
251. Một con gà trống và một con gà mái thi nhau bơi qua sông, hỏi con nào đến đích trước?
Đáp án: Không con nào vì gà không bơi được.
252. Phía trước bạn là quảng trường xanh, sau lưng bạn là quảng trường trắng, vậy quảng trường đỏ ở đâu?
Đáp án: Ở Nga.
253. Tốc độ quy định tối đa của một vận động viên trong cuộc thi chạy marathon là bao nhiêu?
Đáp án: Không có quy định, chạy càng nhanh càng tốt.
254. Ngày tháng mười chưa cười đã tối. Đêm tháng mấy chưa nằm đã sáng?
Đáp án: Tháng năm.
255. Mật nào không ăn được (đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Mật mã.
256. Khi nào chúng ta nhìn vào số 2 nhưng lại nói là 10?
Đáp án: Khi nhìn vào đồng hồ.
257. Như bạn biết, 5 chia cho 5 thì bằng 1. Nếu bạn Tí có 5 cục kẹo chia đều cho 5 người bạn của mình, thì bạn Tí còn mấy cục kẹo?
Đáp án: Không còn cục nào cả.
258. Mật vụ, mật danh, mật lệnh, mật thư có liên quan đến công việc gì?
Đáp án: Nghề cảnh sát, gián điệp.
259. Ruộng đồng nứt nẻ chân chim
Lúa mầu khô héo, cá tìm chỗ sâu
Ngày đêm tát mẻ miệng gầu
Mong sao thủy lợi đi đầu tưới tiêu? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Hạn hán.
260. Ầm ầm cuốn tự ngoài khơi
Dâng cao, nước ngập, sóng dồi hung hăng
Cuốn trôi nhà cửa xóm làng
Phá đê, tàn hại mùa màng, thuyền ghe? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Bão lụt.
261. Trong truyện “Cô bé quàng khăn đỏ”, bà tiên xuất hiện khi nào?
Đáp án: Trong truyện không có bà tiên.
262. Phương tiện nào được sử dụng trong bài hát “12 giờ”?
Đáp án: Xe đạp.
263. Giới hạn độ tuổi của cầu thủ bóng đá khi tham dự World Cup là bao nhiêu?
Đáp án: Không giới hạn tuổi.
264. Môn thể thao nào mà người ta chỉ đi bộ, ít khi chạy trên cỏ?
Đáp án: Đánh golf.
265. Bonsai có nghĩa là gì?
Đáp án: Thú chơi cây cảnh.
266. Con gì biết đi nhưng người ta vẫn nói nó không biết đi? (đố chữ)
Đáp án: Con bò.
Câu 267. Khu vực Đông Nam Á gồm có bao nhiêu nước?
Đáp án: 11 nước.
Câu 268. Trong bài hát “Con bướm xuân” có nhắc đến bao nhiêu loài hoa?
Đáp án: 4 loài hoa: mai, lan, đào, hồng.
Câu 269. Rượu vang được lên men từ loại quả nào là chủ yếu?
Câu 312. Bây giờ anh hơn em 5 tuổi. Vậy sau bao nhiêu năm nữa tuổi anh bằng tuổi em?
Đáp án: Không bao giờ bằng tuổi nhau.
Câu 313. Trong các họ Việt Nam, họ nào chiếm tỉ lệ nhiều nhất?
Đáp án: Họ Nguyễn.
Câu 314. Ở Châu Phi, chim cánh cụt sống ở nước nào?
Đáp án: Nam Phi.
Câu 315. Đỏ hoe là tính từ mô tả cái gì?
Đáp án: Con mắt.
Câu 316. Sáng sớm Trường Giang lái 1 chiếc cup xanh tung tăng đi chợ mua đồ ăn sáng cho Nhã Phương. Hỏi Trường Giang mua món gì? (Đố chữ)
Đáp án: Canh súp.
Câu 317. Đầu nào không có tóc mà không phải đầu trọc?
Đáp án: Đầu máy, đầu tiên, đầu cầu.
Câu 318. Khi nào thêm vào thì nhẹ, bớt đi thì nặng?
Đáp án: Thêm tiền.
Câu 319. Cua đá, cua đinh và cáy. Con nào không thuộc bộ cua?
Đáp án: Cua đinh.
Câu 320. Dãy núi nào là sự phân chia khí hậu giữa hai miền Bắc và Nam?
Đáp án: Dãy Bạch Mã.
Câu 321. Loài chim nào không bao giờ bay, không bao giờ đi?
Đáp án: Chim đồ chơi.
Câu 322. Đường thốt nốt là đặc sản của tỉnh nào?
Đáp án: An Giang.
Câu 323. “Hoàng tử mưa” là biệt danh của ca sĩ nào?
Đáp án: Sơn Tùng MTP.
Câu 324. “Công chúa bong bóng” là biệt danh của ai?
Đáp án: Bảo Thy.
Câu 325. “Thân hình đã chết từ lâu, mà hai con mắt, bộ râu vẫn còn” là cái gì?
Đáp án: Gốc tre khô.
Câu 326. Tướng nào mà không cần ăn uống mà vẫn đánh trận được?
Đáp án: Tướng trong bàn cờ.
Câu 327. Thành đi ra đường mặc áo màu xanh lá tại sao không ai tới gần? (Đố chữ).
Đáp án: Xanh lá – Xa lánh.
Câu 328. Cầu vồng có mấy màu?
Đáp án: Rất nhiều màu.
Câu 329. Làm thế nào để nhìn thấu bên trong một con người?
Đáp án: Chụp CT toàn thân, chụp cắt lớp.
Câu 330. Cái gì của con chim mà lại có trên cơ thể con người?
Đáp án: Vết chân chim.
Câu 331. Tên đại dương tiếp giáp với phần đất liền của nước ta?
Đáp án: Biển Đông.
Câu 332.
Quả gì to nhỏ linh tinh
Chỗ như bát úp, chỗ hình kỳ quan
Tuổi đời cùng với thế gian
Trên quả, cây mọc tràn lan lạ lùng? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Ngọn núi.
Câu 333. Ông gì mà ti tỉ ông
Ban đêm thì thấy, trưa không ông nào
Hay là tuổi hạc đã cao
Mỏi chân ông chẳng thể nào xuống chơi! (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Ngôi sao.
Câu 334. Ma gì trông thấy hẳn hoi – Sáng lòa, xanh lét, tối trời tha ma? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Ma trơi.
Câu 335. Cuộc đời vô sắc vô hình
Thân tôi trôi nổi, bồng bềnh đó đây
Có tôi, người vật, cỏ cây
Đều sinh sống được, tôi hay giúp đời?
(Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Không khí.
Câu 336. Cái gì ở khắp mọi nơi
Dài trăm cây số, mắt người khó trông
Mọi sinh vật, mọi côn trùng
Nếu không có nó, khó lòng tồn sinh?
(Đó là gì?)
Đáp án: Gió.
Câu 337. Khi người gọi là chị
Lúc người gọi là ông
Làm tôi bối rối trong lòng
Đêm đêm mới dám ra trông mọi người?
(Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Chị Hằng (mặt trăng).
Câu 338. Vừa bằng cái vung
Mà vùng xuống ao
Người đào chẳng thấy
Người lấy chẳng được?
(Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Mặt trăng.
Câu 339. Cái chi quê ở trên trời – Đêm đêm lặng đứng ngắm người trần gian – Anh em nhiều lắm vô vàn – Đố ai đếm được rõ ràng không sai? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Ngôi sao.
Câu 340. Rõ ràng chẳng phải nồi canh – Thế mà vị mặn, nước xanh, cá nhiều? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Biển.
Câu 341. “Lan lên lầu lấy lược Lan lấy lộn lưỡi lam Lan lên lầu lấy lại”. Trong câu trên có bao nhiêu chữ L?
Đáp án: 1.
Câu 342. Trong bài hát “tiếng hát chim đa đa” cô gái bao nhiêu tuổi?
Đáp án: 15 tuổi.
Câu 343. Trong bài hát trên, tình cờ tôi gặp lại em ở đâu?
Đáp án: Trên một chuyến đò.
Câu 344. Hoa gì không phải hôm nay. (Chơi chữ)?
Đáp án: Hoa mai.
Câu 345. Gọi là tên nhưng không bắn bằng cung là gì?
Đáp án: Cái tên gọi.
Câu 346. Giả sử bạn là bác tài xế. Trên xe lúc này có Hồng và Huệ, lát sau Mai và Trang lên xe, 30 phút sau Trang, Hồng, Huệ cùng xuống xe. Hỏi bác tài xế tên gì?
Đáp án: Tên người đang trả lời đáp án.
Câu 347. Con gì bỏ đầu bỏ đuôi thành con chim (Đố chữ)
Đáp án: Con Cóc (Bỏ chữ c đi).
Câu 348. Lão hạc trong tác phẩm “Lão hạc” tự tử bằng cách nào?
Đáp án: Ăn bả chó.
Câu 349. Con công bị chết thì gọi là gì. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Công tử.
Câu 350. Hoàn thành câu tục ngữ sau:
Ăn quả nhớ kẻ trồng cây
Ăn khoai nhớ kẻ…
Đáp án: Cho dây mà trồng.
Câu đố Nhanh như chớp hay nhất
Câu 351. Khi đổ bánh xèo nó kêu xèo, vậy khi đổ bánh bèo nó kêu sao?
Đáp án: Nó không kêu.
Câu 352. Người trưởng thành sẽ có bao nhiêu cái răng?
Đáp án: 32 cái răng.
Câu 353. Tranh nào không vẽ bằng bút hay màu?
Đáp án: Tranh cử, tranh thủ, tranh cãi.
Câu 354. Hồng gì không ăn được nhưng ai cũng thích. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Hồng Nhan.
Câu 355. Bạc gì mà không bị phai màu. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Bạc phận.
Câu 356. Quả gì càng nặng càng dễ khóc. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Quả lê.
Câu 357. Liệt kê 3 bài hát có từ “em” của ca sỹ Hương Tràm?
Đáp án: Với em là mãi mãi, em vẫn chờ, em, anh thế giới và em.
Câu 358. Ngày nào đã có từ rất lâu nhưng không ai thấy?
Đáp án: Ngày xửa ngày xưa.
Câu 359. Vòng xoay nhà thờ Đức Bà ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh có tên gọi là gì?
Đáp án: Công xã Pari.
Câu 360. Vòng xoay Hồ con Rùa ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh còn có tên gọi khác là gì?
Đáp án: Công trường quốc tế.
Câu 361. Quả gì không ai muốn ăn?
Đáp án: Quả báo.
Câu 362. Công nào không có lông. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Công lý.
Câu 363. Công nào không biết múa mà lại biết đá bóng?
Đáp án: Công Phượng.
Câu 364. Quả gì thêm huyền thì ngọt, thêm sắc thì chua. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Quả dừa – Quả dứa.
Câu 365. Con gì đầu chuột, đuôi heo?
Đáp án: Con giáp.
Câu 366. Vòng xoay chợ Bến Thành ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh còn có tên gọi khác là gì?
Đáp án: Công trường Quách Thị Trang.
Câu 367. Vòng xoay bến Bạch Đằng ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh còn có tên gọi khác là gì?
Đáp án: Công trường Mê Linh.
Câu 368. Năm 2016, tổng thống Obama đã thưởng thức đặc sản gì ở Hà Nội?
Đáp án: Bún chả.
Câu 369. Nước nào nóng nhất?
Đáp án: Nước sôi.
Câu 370. Sân bay nào không ở trên mặt đất?
Đáp án: Sân bay trên tàu.
Câu 371. Ở đâu ngựa có thể qua sông, voi thì không?
Câu 376. Có 1 người đứng ở chân cầu. Ở giữa cầu có một con gấu rất hung dữ không cho ai qua cầu hết. Người đó sẽ mất hết 5 phút để đi từ chân cầu cho đến giữa cầu và con gấu cũng chỉ ngủ có 5 phút là tỉnh dậy. Hỏi người đó làm sao để qua được bên kia?
Đáp án: Đi đến giữa cầu và quay mặt ngược lại. Con gấu thức dậy tưởng người đó từ bên kia qua nên rượt trở lại. Thế là người đó đã qua được cầu!
Câu 377. Có một rổ táo, trong rổ có ba quả, làm sao để chia cho 3 người, mỗi người một quả mà vẫn còn một quả trong rổ???
Đáp án: Thì đưa cho 2 người đầu mỗi người 1 quả. Còn 1 quả trong rổ đưa nguyên cả cái rổ đựng quả táo cho người còn lại thì 3 người mỗi người đều có 1 quả, và cũng có 1 quả trong rổ!
Câu 378. Có một cây lê có 2 cành, mỗi cành có 2 nhánh lớn, mỗi nhánh lớn có 2 nhánh nhỏ, mỗi nhánh nhò có hai cái lá, cạnh mỗi cái lá có hai quả. Hỏi trên cây đó có mấy quả táo???
Đáp án: Không có quả táo nào vì lê không thể ra quả táo nào trên cây được.
Câu 379. Có 3 thằng lùn xếp hàng dọc đi vào hang. Thằng đi sau cầm 1 cái xô, thằng đi giữa cầm 1 cái xẻng, hỏi thằng đi trước cầm gì?
Đáp án: Thằng đó “cầm đầu” tức là đại ca cầm đầu, nó không phải cầm cái vật gì hết!
Câu 380. Có 2 người mặt mũi giống nhau, ngày tháng năm sinh và giờ sinh cũng giống nhau. Nhưng vì sao lại không phải là sinh đôi?
Đáp án: Vì có thể họ sinh 3, 4, 5.
Câu 381. Đám cưới kim cương là dịp để kỉ niệm vợ chồng đã chung sống với nhau được bao nhiêu năm?
Đáp án: 60 năm.
Câu 382. Đám cưới vàng là đám cưới kỉ niệm bao nhiêu năm?
Đáp án: 50 năm.
Câu 383. Thủ môn Bùi Tiến Dũng mang áo số mấy trong đội tuyển U23 Việt Nam?
Đáp án: Số 1.
Câu 384. Tuyển thủ U23 Việt Nam trước khi ra sân đá bóng còn mải mê bán son là ai?
Đáp án: Hồng Duy.
Câu 385. Theo truyền thuyết, Lê Lợi trả kiếm Thuận Thiên cho vị thần nào?
Đáp án: Thần Kim Quy.
Câu 386. Thần Kim Quy đòi kiếm của Lê Lợi ở đâu?
Đáp án: Hồ Hoàn Kiếm.
Câu 387. Hầm đường bộ dài nhất Việt Nam?
Đáp án: Hầm Hải Vân.
Câu 388. MV “Nơi này có anh” của Sơn Tùng MTP được quay ở đâu?
Đáp án: Hàn Quốc.
Câu 389. Cái gì có càng nhiều thì càng khó thấy nó?
Đáp án: Bóng tối.
Câu 390. Chồng của góa phụ có kết hôn được không?
Đáp án: Không kết hôn được.
Câu 391. Hoàn thành câu tục ngữ sau:
Phúc bất trùng lai
Họa vô đơn…?
Đáp án: Chí
Câu 392. Kể tên một món ăn không thể thiếu trong ngày lễ Tạ ơn? – Đáp án: Gà tây quay, stuffing, các loại bánh nướng, khoai…
Nhà Lan có 3 anh em, người anh đầu tên là Nhất Hào, người thứ hai tên là Nhị Hào. Hỏi người thứ 3 tên gì?
Đáp án: Lan là người thứ 3.
Câu 393. Một con ngựa được cột vào sợi dây dài 3m. Hỏi làm sao nó có thể ăn đống cỏ cách xa nó 5m?
Đáp án: Nếu sợi dây không cột cố định đầu còn lại thì không vấn đề gì.
Câu 394. Con ma xanh đập 1 phát chết, con ma đỏ đập 2 phát thì chết. Làm sao chỉ với 2 lần đập mà chết cả 2 con?
Đáp án: Đập con ma xanh trước là 1, con ma đỏ thấy thế sợ quá, mặt mày tái mét (chuyển sang xanh). Đập con ma xanh mới này nữa là đủ 2.
Câu 395. Điều gì mà chỉ có loài voi làm được, còn các loài khác thì không?
Đáp án: Đẻ ra voi con.
Câu 396. Trong mùa mưa, bốn cô gái mà lại chỉ có một chiếc dù. Chiếc dù quá nhỏ để có thể che hết cho cả bốn người nhưng kỳ lạ là cả bốn cô khi đi ra ngoài đều không cô nào bị ướt. Tại sao vậy?
Đáp án: Vì trời có mưa đâu! Chỉ là trong mùa mưa thôi mà!
Câu 397. Một chiếc máy bay chở 500 viên gạch, một viên bị rơi ra ngoài. Hỏi trên máy bay còn lại bao nhiêu viên gạch?
Đáp án: 499 viên.
Câu 398. Kể ra ba bước để cho một con voi vào một cái tủ lạnh?
Đáp án: 1. Mở tủ lạnh. 2. Cho con voi vào. 3. Đóng tủ lạnh lại.
Câu 399. Kể ra bốn bước để cho một con hươu vào trong tủ lạnh?
Đáp án:
1. Mở tủ lạnh.
2. Lấy con voi ra.
3. Cho con hươu vào.
4. Đóng tủ lạnh.
Câu 400. Hôm nay là sinh nhật của vua sư tử. Tất cả muông thú đều có mặt ở bữa tiệc trừ một con. Tại sao?
Đáp án: Bởi vì con hươu vẫn ở trong tủ lạnh.
Câu đố Nhanh như chớp hay nhất
Câu 401. Con chó có thể cắn đứt sợi dây điện mà không bị gì. Tại sao?
Đáp án: Dây điện không có cắm điện.
Câu 402. Tên gọi của 1 loài hoa đi khắp thế giới là gì? (đố chữ)
Đáp án: Hoa hậu, Hoa mặt trời.
Câu 403. Tháng 2 nào có 30 ngày?
Đáp án: Tháng 2 âm lịch.
Câu 404. Rau gì không trồng không tưới, muôn hình muôn vẻ miệng cười khen ngon (đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Rau câu.
Câu 405. Cây gì có hai cái càng?
Đáp án: Cây kéo.
Câu 406. Thứ gì xuất khẩu thì được, nhập khẩu thì không?
Đáp án: Lời nói.
Câu 407. Trước khi có những phương tiện liên lạc hiện đại thì con người liên lạc ở khoảng cách xa bằng cách gì?
Đáp án: Gửi thư bằng bồ câu.
Câu 408. Thành phố nào ở miền Tây Nam Bộ được mệnh danh là “Tây Đô”?
Đáp án: Cần Thơ.
Câu 409. Đũa ăn khác đũa thần ở điểm cơ bản nào?
Đáp án: Đũa ăn có 2 chiếc còn đũa thần có 1 chiếc.
Câu 410. Trong các loại lò, lò gì không dùng để nấu?
Đáp án: Lò luyện thi, lò xo.
Câu 411. Chồng của chị dâu mình thì là gì của mình?
Đáp án: Anh ruột.
Câu 412. Nguyễn Du Viết truyện Kiều dựa vào tác phẩm nào?
Đáp án: Thi Vân Kiều truyện.
Câu 413. Chỉ có hai thứ chúng ta không thể ăn vào bữa tối. Đó là gì?
Đáp án:Bữa sáng và bữa trưa.
Câu 414. Hãy làm một phép toán cộng đơn giản! Không được phép dùng máy tính.
Lấy 1000 rồi cộng thêm 20
Giờ cộng thêm 1000 một lần nữa.
Rồi cộng với 30.
Cộng thêm 1000 một lần nữa.
Giờ cộng thêm 40.
Cộng tiếp 1000 nữa.
Cuối cùng cộng thêm 10 nữa.
Tổng là?
Đáp án: 4100. Tớ đoán một vài bị sẽ bạn nhầm kết quả là 5000!
Câu 416. Na là con gái của Nam. Vậy thì Nam là ____ của bố Na. Điền từ còn thiếu vào phần còn thiếu ____
Đáp án: Tên.
Câu 417. Cả Tuấn và Giang đều sinh trong Tháng Mười nhưng sinh nhật của họ lại vào tháng mười hai. Tại sao lại có thể như vậy?
Đáp án: Tháng Mười là một địa danh!
Câu 418. Bạn sẽ nhận được kết quả bao nhiêu khi cộng 300 lần số 3 (Không dùng máy tính)?
Đáp án: 303.
Câu 419. Có 1 đàn chim đậu trên cành, người thợ săn bắn cái rằm. Hỏi chết mấy con?
Đáp án: Rằm là 15 —> chết 15 con
Câu 420. Cắm vào run rẩy toàn thân Rút ra nước chảy từ chân xuống sàn Hỡi chàng công tử giàu sang Cắm vào xin chớ vội vàng rút ra!
Đáp án: Đó là cái tủ lạnh!
Câu 421. Phụ nữ khi ra chợ thường hay mặc gì?
Đáp án: Mặc cả.
Câu 422. Làm thế nào để 1 tay che kín bầu trời?
Đáp án: Lấy tay che mắt.
Câu 423. Con gì sinh ra đã ồn ào?
Đáp án: Con La.
Câu 424. Câu hát “Vì sợ cô đơn nên em mặc kệ đúng sai” là của bài hát nào?
Đáp án: Anh ơi ở lại.
Câu 425. Mặt trời, mặt trăng, trái đất có vị trí như thế nào thì dao động của thủy triều lớn nhất?
Đáp án: Thẳng hàng.
Câu 426. Bán đảo Đông Dương gồm có mấy nước?
Đáp án: 3 nước (Lào, Việt Nam, Campuchia).
Câu 427. Áo vua mặc gọi là gì?
Đáp án: Hoàng bào.
Câu 428. Vua lên TV thì gọi là gì? (đố chữ)
Đáp án: Long sến.
Câu 429. Hoàn thành câu thành ngữ sau: “Quạ tắm thì ráo, sáo tắm thì…?”
Đáp án: Mưa.
Câu 430. Một cầu thủ bóng đá nổi tiếng có một em trai, nhưng đứa em trai đó không chịu nhận cầu thủ đó là anh của mình, tại sao vậy?
Đáp án: Cầu thủ đó là con gái.
Câu 431. Mai gì không bao giờ thấy nở?
Đáp án: Mai mốt.
Câu 432. Cái gì có cánh mà không biết bay?
Đáp án: Cánh quạt, cánh cửa.
Câu 433. Làm gì mà không phát ra tiếng?
Đáp án: Làm thinh.
Câu 434. Đầu của tôi màu đổ, khi chà mạnh vào đầu của tôi thì chuyển sang màu đen. Tôi là gì?
Đáp án: Que diêm.
Câu 435. Cái gì mà máy tính bàn không thể làm được như laptop?
Đáp án: Gập lại.
Câu 436. Cá gì chỉ sống được 1 ngày?
Đáp án: Cá tháng 4.
Câu 437. Trong bộ truyện tranh “Thám từ Conan”, dụng cụ đầu tiên tiến sĩ Agasa phát minh cho Conan là gì?
Đáp án: Nơ biến đổi giọng nói.
Câu 438. Biên Hòa, Đà Lạt, Tây Ninh, thành phố nào giáp với biển?
Đáp án: Không có thành phố nào.
Câu 439. Hollywood nằm ở bang nào của nước Mỹ?
Đáp án: Canifornia.
Câu 440. Cái gì yêu cầu bạn phải trả lời nhưng lại không hỏi bất kỳ câu hỏi nào?
Đáp án: Cái điện thoại!
Câu 441. Nếu 3 con mèo bắt được 3 con chuột trong 3 phút thì cần bao lâu để 100 con mèo bắt được 100 con chuột?
Đáp án: Vẫn 3 phút thôi!
Câu 442. Tôi như một dải băng, tôi được mẹ thiên nhiên tạo ra, tôi băng qua bầu trời, tôi là ai?
Đáp án: Cầu vồng.
Câu 443. Khi nào thì 99 lớn hơn 100?
Đáp án: Một cái lò vi sóng.
Câu 444. Thông thường thì khi bạn bấm “99” trên lò thì nó sẽ chạy trong 1 phút 39s.
Nhưng nếu bạn bấm “100” thì nó chỉ chạy trong 1 phút.
Con gì mà khi ở dưới nước màu đen nhưng khi lên cạn lại màu đỏ?
Đáp án: Con tôm hùm (Loài tôm khi bị luộc chín đều có màu đỏ).
Câu 445. Cái gì mất đầu vào buổi sáng và có lại đầu vào buổi tối?
Đáp án: Cái gối!
Câu 446. Cái gì có 4 ngón tay thậm chí có cả ngón cái nhưng nó không sống?
Đáp án: Găng tay.
Câu 447. Có 1 người đứng ở chân cầu. Ở giữa cầu có một con gấu rất hung dữ không cho ai qua cầu hết. Người đó sẽ mất hết 5 phút để đi từ chân cầu cho đến giữa cầu và con gấu cũng chỉ ngủ có 5 phút là tỉnh dậy. Hỏi người đó làm sao để qua được bên kia?
Đáp án: Đi đến giữa cầu và quay mặt ngược lại. Con gấu thức dậy tưởng người đó từ bên kia qua nên rượt trở lại. Thế là người đó đã qua được cầu!
Câu 448. Ở Việt Nam, một thằng mù và ba thằng điếc đi ăn phở, mỗi người ăn một tô. Mỗi tô phở là 10 ngàn đồng. Hỏi ăn xong họ phải trả bao nhiêu tiền?
Đáp án: Họ phải trả 20 ngàn đồng vì 1 thằng mù và ba của thằng điếc là 2 người ăn!
Câu 449. Giả sử ta có 1 khúc vải, cắt nó ra làm 100 khúc, thời gian để cắt 1 khúc vải là 5 giây. Hỏi nếu cắt liên tục không ngừng nghỉ thì trong bao lâu sẽ cắt xong???
Đáp án: 495 giây bởi vì 99 khúc (khúc cuối cùng ko phải cắt) X 5 giây = 495 giây!
Câu 450. Ở một xứ nọ, có luật lệ rằng: Ai muốn diện kiến nhà vua thì phải nói một câu. Nếu câu nói thật thì sẽ bị chém đầu, còn nếu là dối thì bị treo cổ. Vậy để gặp được nhà vua của xứ đó, ta phải nói như thế nào?
Đáp án: Để gặp được nhà vui, người đó phải nói “tôi sẽ bị treo cổ!”.
Câu đố Nhanh như chớp hay nhất
Câu 451. “Lòng lang dạ thú”, lang ở đây là con gì?
Đáp án: Lang ở đây là con sói.
Câu 452. Đằng sau màn đêm hắc ám của thứ 6 ngày 13 là gì?
Đáp án: Là ngày thứ 7 ngày 14.
Câu 453. Da tôi trắng trẻo mà chỉ chơi với anh bạn đen thỏ nhám. Chúng tôi là ai?
Đáp án: Cuốn vở và cây bút chì.
Câu 454. Một người đàn ông trung niên ở trong một vùng dân cư được hơn 3 năm qua nhưng lại bị một chứng bệnh. Đó là bệnh gì? (Đố chữ)
Đáp án: Dư cân.
455. Theo phong tục dân gian, con đầu lòng gọi là con gì?
Đáp án: Con so.
456. Con thứ 2 là con gì?
Đáp án: Con dạ.
457. Trứng gà so là trứng gà gì?
Đáp án: Là lứa trứng đầu tiên của con gà khi đẻ.
458. Hoàn thành câu tục ngữ sau: Ai về… mà coi, con gái… cầm roi đi quyền?
Đáp án: Bình Định/ Bình Định.
459. Hành động gì mà con chó đứng bằng ba chân?
Đáp án: Lúc đi tiểu hoặc lúc bắt tay.
460. Thành phố nào có diện tích tự nhiên lớn nhất Việt Nam?
Đáp án: Hà Nội.
461. Hương Tràm đã phát hành bài hát cuối cùng nào trước khi tạm dừng sự nghiệp ca hát?
Đáp án: Ra là em quá mong manh.
462. Trong bài hát “Đừng yêu nữa em mệt rồi” vài điều khi yêu mà nữ ca sĩ muốn gửi gắm là gì?
Đáp án: Một là không nói dối, hai là không nói dối nhiều lần.
463. Trong các môn thể thao , môn nào càng lùi thì càng thắng?
Đáp án: Môn kéo co.
464. Quanh mình tua tủa hạt gai, chín lại đỏ rực như than trong lò. Đó là quả gì?
Đáp án: Quả gấc.
465. Trong tiếng Việt, tìm một từ vừa có tên gọi 1 loài động vật, vừa có tên gọi loài thực vật?
Đáp án: Trứng gà.
466. Người nước nào thiết kế nên tượng nữ thần tự do (Mỹ)?
Đáp án: Nước Pháp.
467. Nhà trắng, Lầu năm góc, Tòa tháp đôi New York, đâu là tòa nhà có diện tích lớn nhất của nước Mỹ?
Đáp án: Lầu năm góc.
468. Thợ nề là tên gọi khác của cộng việc gì?
Đáp án: Thợ hồ.
469. Con người hiện đại thấy được khủng long bạo chúa ở đâu?
Đáp án: Qua phim ảnh, công viên khủng long.
470. Khung long bạo chúa đi bằng bao nhiêu chân?
Đáp án: Bằng 2 chân.
471. Hậu duệ của khủng long thời nay phần lớn là cá, chim, thằn lằn hay rắn?
Đáp án: Chim.
472. Tam Kì, Đã Nẵng, Huế, Vinh, đâu là thành phố có diện tích lớn nhất miền Trung nước ta hiện nay?
Đáp án: Đà Nẵng.
473. Có một cây lê có 2 cành, mỗi cành có 2 nhánh lớn, mỗi nhánh lớn có 2 nhánh nhỏ, mỗi nhánh nhò có hai cái lá, cạnh mỗi cái lá có hai quả. Hỏi trên cây đó có mấy quả táo???
Đáp án: Không có quả táo nào vì lê không thể ra quả táo nào trên cây được.
474. Đố mọi người cái gì của người con gái lúc nào cũng ẩm ướt?
Đáp án: Cái lưỡi.
475. Cái gì càng chơi càng ra nước?
Đáp án: Chơi cờ.
476. Bên trái đường có một căn nhà xanh, bên phải đường có một căn nhà đỏ. Vậy nhà trắng ở đâu ?
Đáp án: Ở Mỹ.
477. Có 3 người tự nhận Thiên là em trai của họ, nhưng hỏi lại Thiên thì Thiên lại nói mình đâu có anh trai nào ? Theo mọi người 3 người kia ai là người nói không đúng?
Đáp án: Không có ai nói dối cả vì 3 người đó là 3 chị gái của Thiên.
478. Đố mọi người có cái gì mà khi bạn gọi nó không bao giờ xuất hiện dù có đánh chết
Đáp án: Sự im lặng.
479. Năm ông cùng ở một nhà
Tình huynh nghĩa đệ vào ra thuận hòa
Bốn ông tuổi đã lên ba
Một ông đã già lại mới lên hai.
Đố là cái gì?
Đáp án: 5 ngón tay.
480. Vật dụng gì đặc trưng của dân tộc Thái được đưa vào bài hát?
Đáp án: Chiếc khăn Piêu.
481. Hoàn thành câu tục ngữ:
“Buôn có bạn, bán có…”
Đáp án: Phường.
482. Cái gì càng to càng dễ vỡ?
Đáp án: Quả bóng bay.
483. Độc gì có trúng cũng không chết?
Đáp án: Độc đắc.
484. Trên ngực của Captain America có hình gì?
Đáp án: Hình ngôi sao.
485. Tên thật của Wonder Woman là gì?
Đáp án: Diana.
486. Bản gốc của phim “Tháng năm rực rỡ” tên gì?
Đáp án: Sunny.
487. Trong truyện, Doremon học lớp mất?
Đáp án: Doremon không đi học.
488. Nhân vật Chaien trong Doremon học hát bài nào hay nhất?
Đáp án: Chaien hát bài nào cũng dở.
489. Cái gì càng trắng càng bẩn?
Đáp án: Cái bảng.
490. Natri Clorua có tên gọi thông thường là gì?
Đáp án: Muối ăn.
491. Chỉ nào không dùng để may quần áo?
Đáp án: Chỉ nha khoa.
492. Chỉ nào mà ai cũng thích và muốn có?
Đáp án: Chỉ Vàng.
493. Cá nào biết bay?
Đáp án: Cá chuồn.
494. Loài heo nào không có cả thịt lẫn mỡ?
Đáp án: Heo đất.
Câu 1. Cái gì không có miệng, không lưỡi mà có răng?
Đáp án: Con tem, cây lược.
Câu 2. Cái gì không có răng, không miệng mà có lưỡi?
Đáp án: Con dao, cái nón.
Câu 3. Làm sao để ngủ mà lưng không chạm giường?
Đáp án: Ngồi ngủ, ngồi dựa vào ghế ngủ, nằm sấp.
Câu 4. Làm sao đi mà chân không chạm đất?
Đáp án: Đi trên mặt kính của tòa nhà cao tầng, đi trên các phương tiện.
Câu 5. Câu nói “Hãy cho tôi một điểm tựa, tôi sẽ nhấc bổng Trái Đất lên”. Được dựa trên nguyên lý vật lý nào?
Đáp án: Nguyên lý đòn bẩy.
Câu 6. Thủ đô Singapore là gì?
Đáp án: Singapore.
Câu 7. Con gì không có giống đực và giống cái?
Đáp án: Con tem.
Câu 8. Hình tròn, hình thoi, hình thang điểm chung của các hình này là gì?
Đáp án: Đều bắt đầu từ chữ “T”.
Câu 9. Cau gì không ăn được?
Đáp án: Cau có.
Câu 10. Công nhân, công lí, công tâm, công bằng trong các từ trên từ nào không cùng nhóm?
Đáp án: Công nhân.
Câu 11. Xã nào đông dân nhất?
Đáp án: Xã hội.
Câu 12. Con đường nào dài nhất?
Đáp án: Đường đời.
Câu 13.Quần gì rộng nhất?
Đáp án: Quần đảo.
Câu 14. Cái gì mà đi thì nằm, đứng cũng nằm, nhưng khi nằm lại đứng?
Đáp án: Bàn chân.
Câu 15. 1′ => 4 = 1505 có nghĩa là gì?
Đáp án: 1 phút suy tư bằng 1 năm không ngủ.
Câu 16. Núi nào mà chặt ra từng khúc?
Đáp án: Thái Sơn.
Câu 17.Con gì đập thì sống, mà không đập thì chết?
Đáp án: Con tim.
Câu 18. Có 1 đàn chuột điếc đi ngang qua tao, hỏi đàn chuột này có mấy con?
Đáp án: Điếc là hư tai, hư tai là hai tư (24).
Câu 19. Con gì không gáy ò ó o mà người ta vẫn gọi là gà?
Đáp án: Gà con và gà mái.
Câu 20.Con trai có gì quý nhất?
Đáp án: Ngọc trai.
Câu 21. Cơ quan quan trọng nhất của phụ nữ là gì ?
Đáp án: Hội Liên Hiệp Phụ Nữ.
Câu 22.Khi Beckham thực hiện quả đá PENALTY, anh ta sẽ sút vào đâu?
Đáp án: Trái banh.
Câu 23.Bệnh nào mang tên từ 3 bộ phận cơ thể trở lên?
Đáp án: Tay – Chân – Miệng.
Câu 24. Dừa nào nghe tên đã thấy nóng?
Đáp án: Dừa lửa.
Câu 25. Cá không ăn muối cá ươn, cá ăn muối thì thế nào?
Đáp án: Cá không ươn.
Câu 26. Mật nào không ăn được (đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Mật mã.
Câu 27. Mật vụ, mật danh, mật lệnh, mật thư có liên quan đến công việc gì?
Đáp án: Nghề cảnh sát, gián điệp.
Câu 28. Giới hạn độ tuổi của cầu thủ bóng đá khi tham dự World Cup là bao nhiêu?
Đáp án: Không giới hạn tuổi.
Câu 29. World Cup cứ 5 năm tổ chức 1 lần thì 20 năm sẽ tổ chức được bao nhiêu lần?
Đáp án: World Cup tổ chức 4 năm một lần.
Câu 30. Con gì rất giỏi ăn vô, ngày ngày tháng tháng chẳng buồn nhả ra?
Đáp án: Con heo đất.
Câu 31.Hành gì không dùng để ăn?
Đáp án: Hành hạ.
Câu 32. Có bao nhiêu chữ C trong câu sau đây: “Cơm, canh, cháo gì tớ cũng thích ăn!”
Đáp án: 1 chữ C, ở chữ “Cơm”.
Câu 33.Cái gì mà tay trái cầm được nhưng tay phải cầm không được?
Đáp án: Tay phải.
Câu 34. Từ gì mà 100% nguời dân Việt Nam và người Mỹ đều phát âm sai?
Đáp án: Từ “sai”.
Câu 35. Ai cũng biết đỉnh núi Everest cao nhất thế giới, vậy trước khi đỉnh Everest được khám phá, thì đỉnh núi nào là cao nhất thế giới?
Đáp án: Everest.
Câu 36. Nắng ba năm ta chưa hề bỏ bạn?
Đáp án: Cái bóng.
Câu 37. Một ly thuỷ tinh đựng đầy nước, hỏi làm thế nào để lấy nước dưới đáy ly mà không đổ nước ra ngoài?
Đáp án: Dùng ống hút.
Câu 38. Cái gì người mua biết, người bán cũng biết, người xài thì không bao giờ biết?
Đáp án: Quan tài.
Câu 39. Tại sao khi bắn súng người ta lại nhắm một mắt?
Đáp án: Nhắm 2 mắt thì sẽ không thấy đường để bắn.
Câu 41. Loại nước giải khát nào chứa sắt và canxi?
Đáp án: Cafe (ca: canxi, Fe: sắt).
Câu 42. Con cua đỏ dài 10 cm chạy đua với con cua xanh dài 15cm. Con nào về đích trước? (2 con này cùng loài nhé)
Đáp án: Con cua xanh, vì con cua đỏ đã bị luộc chín.
Câu 43. Cái gì đánh cha, đánh má, đánh anh, đánh chị, đánh em?
Đáp án: Bàn chải đánh răng.
Câu 44. Cái gì Adam có 2 mà Eva chỉ có 1?
Đáp án: Chữ a.
Câu 45. Con nào ít ai dám ăn, một kẻ lầm lỗi cả bày chịu theo?
Đáp án: Con sâu làm rầu.
Câu 46. Đồi nào không trồng cây được (đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Đồi bại, đồi mồi.
Câu 47.Nơi nào có đường sá, nhưng không có xe cộ; có nhà ở, nhưng không có người; có siêu thị, công ty,… nhưng không có hàng hóa,… Đó là nơi nào?
Đáp án: Bản đồ.
Câu 48.Có một cây lê có hai cành, mỗi cành có hai nhánh lớn, mỗi nhánh lớn có hai nhánh nhỏ, mỗi nhánh nhò có hai cái lá, cạnh mỗi cái lá có hai quả. Hỏi trên cây đó có mấy quả táo?
Đáp án: Không có quả táo nào vì lê không thể ra quả táo nào trên cây được.
Câu 49.Một tội phạm bị kết án tử hình. Hắn ta phải chọn một trong ba căn phòng: phòng thứ nhất lửa cháy dữ dội, phòng thứ hai đầy những kẻ ám sát đang giương súng, và phòng thứ ba đầy sư tử nhịn đói trong ba năm. Phòng nào an toàn nhất cho hắn?
Đáp án: Chọn phòng số 3 (vì sư tử nhịn đói 3 năm nó đã chết).
Câu 50.Có một anh chàng làm việc trong một tòa nhà 50 tầng, nhưng anh ta lại chỉ đi thang máy lên đến tầng 35 rồi đoạn còn lại anh ta đi thang bộ. Tại sao anh ta lại làm như vậy?
Đáp án: Vì ông ta làm việc ở tầng 35.
Câu 51. Trẻ con khi móc ngoéo với nhau thường sử dụng ngón tay nào?
Đáp án: Ngón út.
Câu 52.Cây cầu lớn nhất dưới lòng đất nằm ở đâu trên Thế giới?
Đáp án: Không có.
Câu 53. Mẹ của mẹ chồng mình gọi là gì?
Đáp án: Bà ngoại.
Câu 54. Nhân vật Minion trong phim hoạt hình “Kẻ cắp mặt trăng” có mấy màu để nhận biết?
Đáp án: 2 màu (xanh và vàng).
Câu 55. Nhận vật Minion thích ăn món gì nhất?
Đáp án: Ăn chuối.
Câu 56. Trong bài hát “Đi học về” ông bà xuất hiện trong câu hát thứ mấy?
Đáp án: Không có ông bà.
Câu 57. Vậy trong bài hát, bé chào ai khi về đến nhà?
Đáp án: Chào ba mẹ.
Câu 58. Ở Việt Nam, cầu nào xoay được?
Đáp án: Cầu sông Hàn.
Câu 59. Túi thần kì của Doremon có màu gì?
Đáp án: Màu trắng.
Câu 60.Túi thần kì của Doremon có bao nhiêu ngăn?
Đáp án: Có 1 ngăn.
Câu 61.Đuôi của Doremon trong phim hoạt hình có màu gì?
Đáp án: Màu đỏ.
Câu 62. Hãy kể tên con vật mà đầu dưới nước đuôi trên rừng?
Đáp án: Cá Voi.
Câu 63. Con gì đầu dê mình ốc?
Đáp án: Con dốc.
Câu 64. 2 con vịt đi trước 2 con vịt, 2 con vịt đi sau 2 con vịt, 2 con vịt đi giữa 2 con vịt. Hỏi có mấy con vịt?
Đáp án: 4.
Câu 65. Tư bề thành luỹ rất cao – Giặc đánh ào ào vẫn ngủ trong cung. Là gì?
Đáp án: Người ngủ trong mùng.
Câu 66. Tồng phồng rồng phông – Trong lông, ngoài thịt. Là gì?
Đáp án: Lỗ mũi.
Câu 67.Tự nhiên cắt cố đem chôn – Bữa sau sống lại, đẻ con từng bầy. Là gì?
Đáp án: Dây khoai lang.
Câu 68. Tám chân đi đất không mòn – Mà mang trống lệnh, trèo hòn núi cao. Là gì?
Đáp án: Con Nhện
Câu 69. Tám thằng dân vần cục đá tảng – Hai ông xã xách nạng chạy theo. Là gì?
Đáp án: Con Cua.
Câu 70.Tam thủ, nhất vĩ, Lục nhĩ, lục nhãn, Tứ túc chỉ thiên, Tứ túc chỉ địa – là gì?
Đáp án: Hai người khiêng heo.
Câu 71. Tám xóm nhóm lại hai phe – Chẻ nửa cây tre bắc cầu một cột. Là gì?
Đáp án: Quang gánh.
Câu 72. Tay cầm bán nguyệt xênh xang – Làm tôi vì chúa sửa sang cõi bờ – Là cái gì?
Đáp án: Cái liềm.
Câu 73.Thầy hay khoe chữ thuộc lầu, Chủ nhà đi vắng nơi đâu, Ai hỏi văn chương, thầy cũng không dám thở – Là gì?
Đáp án: Tủ sách.
Câu 74. Thằng dẹp kẹp thằng tròn. Là gì?
Đáp án: Khuy áo và nút áo.
Câu 75. Thân ở hạ giới, trí muốn lên trời. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái diều giấy.
Câu 76.Thân bằng tre, thường rúc rích cười – Làm cho nhiều người tỉnh tỉnh, say say. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái điếu cày.
Câu 77. Thân dài lưỡi cứng là ta Hữu thủ vô túc, đố là cái gì
Đáp án: Cái cuốc bàn.
Câu 78. Thân dài một tấc bận áo châu sa, Sống thì không la, chết la như quạ.
Đáp án: Pháo.
Câu 79. Thân em là gái xuân xanh Cớ sao anh lại đem phanh giữa trời Mội người một nước một nơi Em thì nằm dưới, anh thì ngồi trên
Đáp án: Chiếc chiếu.
Câu 80. Thân em mũi nhọn lưng cong Xinh xinh như cái mặt trăng thượng tuần Vốn dòng cha mẹ nông dân Gả sang lấy bạn nông dân làm chồng Thương em anh bế anh bồng Ra đồng thu lượm những bông lúa vàng
Đáp án: Cái liềm.
Câu 81. Chim gì mang tên một loài hoa?
Đáp án: Chim đỗ quyên.
Câu 82. Chim gì có liên quan đến ca sĩ Cẩm Ly?
Đáp án: Chim trắng mồ côi.
Câu 83. Chim gì có liên quan đến ca sĩ Mỹ Tâm?
Đáp án: Chim họa mi.
Câu 84. Chim gì có liên quan đến ca sĩ Quang Linh?
Đáp án: Chim sáo.
Câu 85.Trong tiết kiểm tra, Hà xem tài liệu nhưng tại sao không bị cô giáo la?
Đáp án: Là vì đề mở hoặc thầy giáo đang trông buổi thi hôm đó.
Câu 86. Cây gì trồng lấy nước uống mà không lấy quả?
Đáp án: Cây mía.
Câu 87. Kể tên một loài động vật có khả năng phóng điện?
Đáp án: Cá trình.
Câu 88. Món ăn hình tròn, đựng trong hộp vuông nhưng thường ăn theo hình tam giác là gì?
Đáp án: Pizza.
Câu 89. Đất nước không hề có sông hay hồ nước nào cả?
Đáp án: Ả Rập Saudi.
Câu 90. Giải bóng đá nào mà không có chiếc cúp vô địch?
Đáp án: Sea Game.
Câu 91. Thân em như gái không cha, Mình mẹ đứng giữa, con ra tứ bề. Là gì?
Đáp án: Buồng chuối.
Câu 92.Thân em phỏng độ mười tám đôi mươi – Nực thì dùng đến, rét thời bỏ đi. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái quạt.
Câu 93. Thân em vừa tám tuổi đầu – Bác mẹ tham giàu đem gả chồng xa – Còn duyên em ở trong nhà – Hết duyên, hết phận em ra ngoài đồng. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái chén.
Câu 94. Thân em vừa trắng vừa tròn- Viết bao nhiêu chữ em mòn bấy nhiêu. Là gì?
Đáp án: Viên phấn.
Câu 95. Than rằng đất hỡi trời ơi – Thân tôi gác cửa đâm tôi làm gì. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái ổ khoá.
Câu 96.Thuở bé em có hai sừng – Đến tuổi nửa chừng, mặt đẹp như hoa – Ngoài hai mươi tuổi đã già – Quá ba mươi tuổi, mọc ra hai sừng. Là gì?
Đáp án: Mặt trăng.
Câu 97.Thuyền ai đậu bến Giang Lăng – Trên đàn kìm kêu thánh thót, dưới cò ke than rằng… Là gì?
Đáp án: Ru con bằng nôi.
Câu 98. Tiền môn khi xếp khi xoè – Vừa ngăn mắt ngó vừa che gió lùa. Là gì?
Đáp án: Bình phong (mành mành).
Câu 99. Tôi ăn trước tôi lại ăn thừa – Ngày ngày giúp chúa, chầu vua nhọc nhằn. Là gì?
Đáp án: Người đầu bếp.
Câu 100. Trăm đàng, ngàn ngõ, muôn dân (ngàn ngũ, muôn dân) – Kẻ có áo ở lại – Người ở trần ra đi. Là gì?
Đáp án: Sàng gạo.
Câu 101. Trăm năm trăm tuổi trăm chồng – Mà duyên không lợt, má hồng không phai. Là gì?
Đáp án: Chén uống trà.
Câu 102.Trước mặt thì thấy – Mà lấy không được. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái bóng của ta.
Câu 103. Trồng cây mà chẳng dám trèo – Đến khi già chín vác cù quèo mà quơ. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cây lúa.
Câu 104. Trái chi không thiếu không thừa – Những người nhạy cảm hãy chừa tôi ra. Là gì?
Đáp án: Trái đu đủ.
Câu 105. Trên đá dưới đá, giữa có con cá thờn bơn tòn ten. Là gì?
Đáp án: Răng và lưỡi.
Câu 106. Trên đâu đội sắc vua ban – Dưới thời yếm thắm, dây vàng xum xuê – Thân linh đã gọi thì vê – Ngồi trên mâm ngọc, gươm kề sau lưng. Là gì?
Đáp án: Con gà trống.
Câu 107. Trên cành rách dưới quạt che – Ba tiếng ỷ co, chèo mui, chèo lái. Là gì?
Đáp án: Người ăn mày.
Câu 108.Trên hang đá dưới hang đá – Giữa có con cá thờn bơn. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái miệng.
Câu 109. Trên lông, dưới lông, tối nằm chồng lại một. Là gì?
Đáp án: Đôi mắt.
Câu 110. Trên tàn rác dưới quạt che – Ba tiếng ỷ eo, chèo mũi, chèo lái. Là gì?
Đáp án: Người ăn mày.
Câu 111. Đồng gì mặc được?
Đáp án: Đồng phục.
Câu 112. Đồng gì mà đa số ai cũng thích?
Đáp án: Đồng tiền.
Câu 113.Bối cảnh diễn ra câu chuyện “Chí Phèo” của nhà văn Nam Cao là ở làng nào?
Đáp án: Làng Vũ Đại
Câu 114.Cháo lòng, cháo bò, cháo cá, cháo gà, đâu là loại cháo mà Thị Nở đã nấu cho Chí Phèo ăn?
Đáp án: Không có loại nào (vì Thị Nở nấu cháo hành cho Chí Phèo).
Câu 115. Thị Nở nấu tô cháo hành có bỏ thêm tiêu hột hay tiêu xay?
Đáp án: Không bỏ loại tiêu nào.
Câu 116. Trong bài thơ của mình, nhà thơ Hàn Mặc Tử mở đầu bằng câu: “Sao anh không về chơi thôn Vĩ”, “thôn Vĩ” ở đây tên đầy đủ là gì?
Đáp án: Thôn Vĩ Dạ.
Câu 117. Vậy thôn Vĩ Dạ có phải là quê của nhà thơ Hàn Mặc Tử không?
Đáp án: Không (Vì thôn Vĩ Dạ ở Huế còn quê của Hàn Mặc Tử ở Quy Nhơn).
Câu 118. Lâm Vĩ Dạ có liên quan gì đến thôn Vĩ Dạ không?
Đáp án: Không.
Câu 119. Di tích “Lầu ông Hoàng” là nơi hẹn hò của nhà thơ Hàn Mặc Tử và cô gái tên gì?
Đáp án: Mộng Cầm.
Câu 120. Có hai cô gái cùng nhau đi hái táo trong vườn, cô hái trước được 10 quả, cô hái sau thu được số táo nhiều hơn cô trước. Hỏi cả hai cô gái hái được bao nhiêu quả?
Đáp án: 72 quả táo (Vì cô hái trước hái được 10 quả, cô “hái sau” đọc ngược lại là 62 => cả hai hái được 10 + 62 = 72 quả táo).
Câu 121. Trong bức tranh dân gian Đông Hồ “Em bé ôm gà”, đó là bé trai hay bé gái?
Đáp án: Bé trai.
Câu 122. Con gì cho ăn thì mau chết, bỏ đói thì sống?
Đáp án: Con heo (lợn) đất.
Câu 123. Con vật đầu tiên bay vào vũ trụ là con gì?
Đáp án: Con chó.
Câu 124. Trên tàn rách dưới trạch khô – Cất tiếng i, ô vừa múa vừa hát. Là gì?
Đáp án: Ông ăn mày.
Câu 125. Trên thon dưới phồng – Đầu đỗi nón đồng khi sáng khi tối. Là gì?
Đáp án: Bóng đèn.
Câu 126. Trên vì nước dưới vì nhà – Lòng nầy ai tỏ cho ra nỗi lòng. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái máng xối.
Câu 127. Tròn như lá tía tô – Đông tây nam bắc đi mô cũng về
Đáp án: Cái nón.
Câu 128. Tròn như mặt trăng. Là gì?
Đáp án: Bánh xèo.
Câu 129. Tròn tròn ngửa ngửa nghiêng nghiêng – Nhỏ mà chẳng chịu tu riêng như người. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái chung.
Câu 130. Tròn tròn như lá tía tô – Lội xuống ao hồ, đầu ướt, đuôi khô. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái muỗng (thìa).
Câu 131. Tròn tròn như lá tía tô (2) – Bước cẳng vô hồ trong khô ngoài ướt. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái gáo.
Câu 132. Lồm xồm 2 mép những lông – Ở giữa có lỗ đàn ông chui vào – Chui vào rồi lại chui ra – Năm thì mười họa đàn bà mới chui – Là cái gì?
Đáp án: Cái áo mưa ngày xưa.
Câu 133. Trên lông dưới lông – Tối lồng vào nhau – Là gì?
Đáp án: Đôi mắt.
Câu 134. Trên bằng da dưới cũng bằng da – Đút vào thì ấm rút ra lạnh lùng – Là gì?
Đáp án: Đôi giầy.
Câu 135. Cái gì của chồng mà vợ thích cầm nhất (không nghĩ lung tung)? Là gì?
Đáp án: Tiền.
Câu 136. Con trai có gì quí nhất?
Đáp án: Ngọc trai.
Câu 137. Cơ quan quan trọng nhất của phụ nữ là gì?
Đáp án: Hội Liên Hiệp Phụ Nữ.
Câu 138. Một tay nắm tóc, một tay nhét vào lỗ, sọc sọc sọc… Con này to thật, con này bé quá, nông quá chả có gì, sâu quá mãi không ra… Là hành động gì?
Câu 140. Có đầu mà chẳng có đuôi – Có một khúc giữa cứng ruôi lại mềm. Là gì?
Đáp án: Đòn gánh.
Câu 141. Năm thằng vác Nở đi chôn – Chưa ra đến cửa vách lồ… ra xem. Là gì?
Đáp án: Con rùa.
Câu 142.
Thân em là gái xuân xanh
Cớ sao anh lại đem phanh giữa trời
Mỗi người một nước một nơi
Em thì nằm dưới, anh ngồi lên trên
Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái chiếu.
Câu 143.Ông nằm dưới trỏ ngóc lên – Bà nằm trên rên hừ hừ. Là gì?
Đáp án: Cối xay lúa.
Câu 144.
Lòng em cay đắng quanh năm
Khi ngồi, khi đứng, khi nằm nghênh ngang
Các anh các bác trong làng
Gặp em thì lại vội vàng nâng niu
Vắng em đau khổ trăm chiều
Tuy rằng cay đắng nhưng nhiều người mê
Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái điếu cày.
Câu 145.
Ngồi banh ba góc
Tay thục liên hồi
Lỗ trống thiệt sâu
Rút ra đỏ đầu
Hai người đập chát
Là gì?
Đáp án: Thợ rèn.
Câu 146.
Xiên xiên ba góc xéo cả ba
Ở dưới thiếu một miếng da
Phành ra ba góc da còn thiếu
Khép lại đôi bên thịt vẫn thừa
Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái quạt giấy.
Câu 147. Để yên âu nằm im thin thít – Hể động liếm đít, chạy tứ tung. Là gì?
Đáp án: Con tem.
Câu 148.
Dài dài như trái chuối tây
Một đầu cứng ngắc, đầu đầy lông quăn
Gặm hoài bà xái cả cằm
Mỏi mồm, ướt mép, tay cầm, tay lau. Là gì?
Đáp án: Bắp ngô.
Câu 149.
Thân anh trùng trục trơn lu
Mấy em mút đến anh trào nước ra
Càng mút càng thấy đã người
Mút anh hết sái xương thời lòi ra – Là gì?
Đáp án: Que kem.
Câu 150.
Đút vào nhè nhẹ ngoáy nghe anh!
Cho em tê mê tận mây xanh
Lâu lâu đôi mình mới có độ
Đừng để em ngứa… suốt năm canh! Là gì?
Đáp án: Ngoáy lỗ tai.
Câu 151. Cầu Mống (ở quận 1 thành phố Hồ Chí Minh) hiện giờ có màu gì?
Đáp án: Màu xanh.
Câu 152.Cầu Mống dài 128 mét, một người đi xe máy chạy với vận tốc 40 km/h, hỏi bao lâu thì đi hết cây cầu đó?
Đáp án: Trên cầu không được chạy xe máy.
Câu 153. Cầu Mống bắc qua kênh gì?
Đáp án: Kênh Bến Nghé.
Câu 154.Xanh xanh đỏ đỏ vàng vàng
Bắc cầu Thiên Lý nằm ngang một mình.
Đó là cái gì?
Đáp án: Cầu vồng.
Câu 155. Cầu vồng do hiện tượng gì tạo nên?
Đáp án: Hiện tượng khúc xạ ánh sáng.
Câu 156. Tại sao siêu nhân là con gái nhưng vẫn gọi là 5 anh em siêu nhân mà không phải là 5 chị em siêu nhân?
Đáp án: Vì siêu nhân lớn nhất là con trai => gọi là 5 anh em.
Câu 157.Xe gì càng vô (vào) ga càng đi chậm?
Đáp án: Xe lửa (tàu hỏa) vì “vô ga” = vào nhà ga.
Câu 158.Khi đi vào đường cấm, xe A xin xe B nhường đường, xe B cũng xin xe A nhường đường, hỏi kết quả thế nào?
Đáp án: Vì là đường cấm => không được đi xe.
Câu 159. Cái gì có lắm chân tay
Đuôi thì chẳng thấy, mà có hai đầu?
Đáp án: Cây cầu.
Câu 160. Cái gì không có chân, không có đuôi, không có cơ thể mà có nhiều đầu?
Đáp án: Cầu truyền hình.
Câu 161.Tên thân mật của ca sĩ Lam Trường là anh Hai, ca sĩ Cẩm Ly là chị Tư, vậy ca sĩ Đan Trường là anh Ba Khía đúng hay sai?
Đáp án: Sai (Vì Đan Trường có tên gọi khác là anh Bo).
Câu 162. Hãy chỉ ra 1 từ trong tiếng Việt khi bỏ đi dấu huyền thì vẫn giữ nguyên nghĩa của nó.
Đáp án: lờ – lơ (không để ý đến mình).
Câu 163. Mới dùng thì nắc xom xom – Đến khi dùng chán om xòm mình em – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái nơm úp cá.
Câu 167. Trèo lên, anh nhún, em kêu – Nhún no nhún chán, anh khều nó ra – Là làm gì?
Đáp án: Mở khóa.
Câu 168. Đôi ta vui thú cuộc chơi – Những nước là nước cứ tòi mãi ra – Là gì?
Đáp án: Chơi cờ.
Câu 169. Hai lưng song sóng – Hai họng ấp nhau – Nháu nhàu nhàu – Dí một cái – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái kéo.
Câu 170. Hai chân mà đứng dạng ra – Cái gì ở giữa đố bà con hay? Là cái gì?
Đáp án: Cái đầu gối.
Câu 171. Mặt có, không mồm – Rậm rì hai mép lồm xồm những lông – Là cái gì?
Đáp án: Cái áo mưa ngày xưa hay dùng.
Câu 172. Trong lông ngoài nhẵn như chùi – Khúc thịt ở giữa có mùi… thơm thơm – Là gì?
Đáp án: Quả xoài.
Câu 173. Một khúc cứng ngắc như lim – Nhấp nhô anh đóng vút chìm vào em – Là làm gì?
Đáp án: Giã gạo.
Câu 174.Lột áo quần ra – Khi trần như nhộng thì ta đút vào – Đút vào mới sướng làm sao – Rập lên rập xuống nó trào nước ra – Là gì?
Đáp án: Ăn mía.
Câu 175. Bé thì đặc bí bì bì – Đến lúc đương thì rỗng toách toành toanh – Là gì?
Đáp án: Quả mướp.
Câu 176. Yêu nhau nên “thả” vào nhau – Lúc đầu tuy đau, khi ra rồi… sướng – Là làm gì?
Đáp án: Lấy kim nhổ gai.
Câu 177.Cù rù, củ rũ, cù rù – Khen ai lót ổ cho cu hắn nằm – Khắp người hắn mọc đầy lông – Nằm chơi chẳng đặng, phơi lông ra ngoài – Là gì?
Đáp án: Bắp ngô.
Câu 178. Mình chừng năm tấc cao
Hoa trắng với hoa đào
Kẻ thô tục đâm năm bảy cái
Gái thanh tân ta đút ngay vào – Là gì?
Đáp án: Hoa cỏ may.
Câu 178.Trán em nở, mặt em tròn
Nhìn em vừa đẹp, vừa giòn, vừa xinh
Trách em sao khéo vô tình
Đêm đêm chỉ ngủ một mình trong cung – Là gì?
Đáp án: Mặt trăng.
Câu 179. Con gì không có xương sống mà vẫn đứng được?
Đáp án: Con dốc.
Câu 180.Bánh gì mang tên loài vật?
Đáp án: Bánh sừng trâu.
Câu 181. Ốc gì to nhất?
Đáp án: Ốc đảo.
Câu 182. Cái gì càng cất lại càng thấy?
Đáp án: Cất nhà.
Câu 183. Cái gì càng thiu lại càng ngon?
Đáp án: Giấc ngủ.
Câu 184. Con gì dài và cứng nhất?
Đáp án: Con đường.
Câu 185.Con gì sinh ra đạo đức đã không tốt?
Đáp án: Con lừa.
Câu 186. Bánh gì ăn ít mà nhiều?
Đáp án: Bánh đa.
Câu 187. Con gì có cánh mà không có lông?
Đáp án: Con diều.
Câu 188.Cái gì tay phải cầm được mà tay trái cầm không được?
Đáp án: Cái cánh tay trái.
Câu 189.Kim gì nhiều người thích nhất?
Đáp án: Kim tiền, kim cương.
Câu 190. Kim gì trẻ em thường sợ nhất?
Đáp án: Kim chích.
Câu 191. Con người có thể nhìn thấy được biển nhiều nhất ở đâu?
Đáp án: Trên tấm bản đồ hoặc quả địa cầu.
Câu 192. Trò gì 5 bé hơn 2, 2 bé hơn 0 và 0 bé hơn 5?
Đáp án: Oằn tù xì.
Câu 193. Trái gì không hái được nhưng rất dễ tan vỡ?
Đáp án: Trái tim.
Câu 194.Cô bé quàng khăn đỏ đội nón màu gì?
Đáp án: Cô bé không đội nón.
Câu 195. Chồng của mẹ mình là ai?
Đáp án: Ba/ bố/ tía mình.
Câu 196.
Mẹ đi chợ mua 5 trái bưởi và 5 trái cam con ăn mất 2 trái cam. Hỏi còn mấy trái bưởi?
Đáp án: 5 trái vì không ăn bưởi.
Câu 197.
Ngồi banh ba góc – Tay thục liên hồi – Lỗ trống thiệt sâu – Rút ra đỏ đầu – Hai người đập chát – Là gì?
Đáp án: Thợ rèn.
Câu 198. Xiên xiên ba góc xéo cả ba – Ở dưới thiếu một miếng da – Phành ra ba góc da còn thiếu – Khép lại đôi bên thịt vẫn thừa – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái quạt giấy.
Câu 199. Có 1 con trâu. Đầu nó thì hướng về hướng mặt trời mọc, nó quay trái 2 vòng sau đó quay ngược lại sau đó lại quay phải hai vòng hỏi cái đuôi của nó chỉ hướng nào?
Đáp án: Hướng xuống đất
Câu 200.
Đố mọi người có vật gì mà có thể giúp chúng ta nhìn thẳng qua tường dễ dàng?
Đáp án: Cái cửa sổ.
Câu 201.
Đố mọi người làm cách nào để không bao giờ buồn ngủ khi thức đủ 7 ngày?
Đáp án: Ngủ đêm.
Câu 202. Cày trên đồng ruộng trắng phau – Khát xuống uống nước giếng sâu đen ngòm. Đố là cái gì?
Đáp án: Cây bút mực.
Câu 203.Vừa bằng bàn tay – Thịt da phơi bày – Khép nép bờ khe – Anh hùng banh nhẹ – Nhét vô sung sướng – Rút ra vấn vương. – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái ví tiền.
Câu 204. Lò mò tìm thấy lỗ – Loáy hoáy nhét vội vô – Lúc lắc chờ em rên – Rút ra, ôi! tới bến. Là gì?
Êm êm, ấm ấm ta trào nước ra – Vô thư viện, chế chung trà – Mời người tục… hữu, hỏi là cái chi chi?
Đáp án: Cái phin pha cà phê.
Câu 206. Mình tròn vành vạnh, đít bảnh bao
Mân mân mó mó đút ngay vào
Thủy hỏa tương giao sôi sùng sục
Âm dương nhị khí sướng làm sao
Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái điếu bát.
Câu 207. Ông nằm dưới, bà nằm trên – Ông dướn người lên, bà rên ừ ừ… Là gì?
Đáp án: Cái cối xay.
Câu 208. Nhấp nhấp trên – Nhấp nhấp dưới – Dưới nhấp trên sướng – Trên nhấp dưới đau – Rút ra chảy máu – Là gì?
Đáp án: Câu cá.
Câu 209. Bốn chân chong chóng – Hai bụng kề nhau – Cắm giữa phao câu – Nghiến đi nghiến lại – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cối xay.
Câu 210.Mình trần cao lớn trượng phu – Đóng mười lần khố, trật cu ra ngoài – Là gì?
Đáp án: Cây chuối trổ buồng.
Câu 211.Cô nào mà tất cả mọi người đều sợ không chỉ học sinh?
Đáp án: Corona (Cô rô na).
Câu 212. Con gì có mũi mà không có mắt, có lưỡi mà không có miệng?
Đáp án: Con dao.
Câu 213.Kết thúc câu chuyện “Cây tre trăm đốt”, anh Khoai bay lên trời bằng gì?
Đáp án: Anh Khoai không bay lên trời.
Câu 214.Cái gì 2 lỗ: có gió thì sống, không gió thì chết?
Đáp án: Lỗ mũi.
Câu 215.Thân em vừa trắng lại vừa mềm – Vừa bàn tay úp – Anh mà miết lên miết xuống là nó tiết nhớt ra
Đáp án: Bánh xà phòng.
Câu 216.Xe nào không bao giờ giảm đi?
Đáp án: Xe tăng.
Câu 217. Ba con gà có tất cả bao nhiêu cái răng?
Đáp án: Gà không có răng.
Câu 218. Con gì sinh ra đã được làm vua?
Đáp án: Con cua hoàng đế.
Câu 219. Nhà nào lạnh lẽo nhưng ai cũng muốn tới?
Đáp án: Nhà băng.
Câu 220. Bông gì không mọc từ cây?
Đáp án: Bông tai.
Câu 221. Môn thể thao nào có cả vua lẫn hoàng hậu?
Đáp án: Cờ vua.
Câu 222. Loại xe không có bánh thường thấy ở đâu?
Đáp án: Trong bàn cờ vua.
Câu 223. Kiến nào không bao giờ ngủ?
Đáp án: Kiến thức.
Câu 224. Quả gì ai cũng sợ ăn trúng?
Đáp án: Quả báo.
Câu 225. Bức tường nào dài nhất thế giới?
Đáp án: Vạn lý trường thành.
Câu 226. Đồng gì mà đa số ai cũng thích?
Đáp án: Đồng tiền.
Câu 227.Cái gì không có chân, không có đuôi, không có cơ thể mà có nhiều đầu?
Đáp án: Cầu truyền hình.
Câu 228. Người ta phát hiện ra xác chết của một chàng trai treo cổ chết ở nóc nhà. Dưới chân cậu ta cách khoảng 20 cm đến sàn nhà là một vũng nước lớn. Hỏi cậu ta làm sao để có thể leo lên nóc nhà mà tự tử được?
Đáp án: Đứng lên tảng nước đá.
Câu 229. Chàng thời coi thiếp là ai
Chàng buồn chàng lại đút hoài không tha
Hết buồn chàng lại rút ra
Có ngày chàng đút tới ba bốn lần
Thiếp thì nổi tiếng cù lần
Chàng cần thì đút, hết cần thì thôi
Hằng ngày hàng tháng liên hồi
Có ngày thiếp cũng quy hồi nghĩa trang – Là gì?
Đáp án: Đầu video.
Câu 230. Nâng em lên
Đặt em xuống
Dạng chân ra
Tha hồ mà bóp – Là gì?
Đáp án: Vác súng, đặt súng và bóp cò.
Câu 231.Cầu Mống (ở quận 1 thành phố Hồ Chí Minh) hiện giờ có màu gì?
Đáp án: Màu xanh.
Câu 232. Cầu Mống dài 128 mét, một người đi xe máy chạy với vận tốc 40 km/h, hỏi bao lâu thì đi hết cây cầu đó?
Đáp án: Trên cầu không được chạy xe máy.
Câu 233. Cầu Mống bắc qua kênh gì?
Đáp án: Kênh Bến Nghé.
Câu 234. Tết năm nay, bé Xuân 9 tuổi, anh trai bé Xuân 12 tuổi. Hỏi 5 năm sau anh trai bé Xuân sẽ hơn bé Xuân mấy tuổi?
Đáp án: 3 tuổi.
Câu 235.Cầu vồng do hiện tượng gì tạo nên?
Đáp án: Hiện tượng khúc xạ ánh sáng.
Câu 236. Tại sao siêu nhân là con gái nhưng vẫn gọi là 5 anh em siêu nhân mà không phải là 5 chị em siêu nhân?
Đáp án: Vì siêu nhân lớn nhất là con trai > gọi là 5 anh em.
Câu 237. Xe gì càng vô (vào) ga càng đi chậm?
Đáp án: Xe lửa (tàu hỏa) vì “vô ga” = vào nhà ga.
Câu 238.Khi đi vào đường cấm, xe A xin xe B nhường đường, xe B cũng xin xe A nhường đường, hỏi kết quả thế nào?
Đáp án: Vì là đường cấm => không được đi xe.
Câu 239. Cái gì có lắm chân tay – Đuôi thì chẳng thấy, mà có hai đầu?
Đáp án: Cây cầu.
Câu 240. Cái gì không có chân, không có đuôi, không có cơ thể mà có nhiều đầu?
Đáp án: Cầu truyền hình.
Câu 241. Tên thân mật của ca sĩ Lam Trường là anh Hai, ca sĩ Cẩm Ly là chị Tư, vậy ca sĩ Đan Trường là anh Ba Khía đúng hay sai?
Đáp án: Sai (Vì Đan Trường có tên gọi khác là anh Bo).
Câu 242. Hãy chỉ ra 1 từ trong tiếng Việt khi bỏ đi dấu huyền thì vẫn giữ nguyên nghĩa của nó.
Đáp án: Lờ – lơ (không để ý đến mình).
Câu 243.Sáng, chiều gương mặt hiền hòa
Giữa trưa bộ mặt chói lòa gắt gay
Đi đằng đông, về đằng tây
Hôm nào vắng mặt, trời mây tối mù?
(Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Mặt trời.
Câu 244. Khi xanh, khi trắng, khi hồng Chẳng thả dưới nước cũng bồng bềnh trôi? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Đám mây.
Câu 245.Mặt gì phẳng lặng nghênh ngang
Người đi muôn lối, dọc ngang phố phường?
(Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Mặt đất.
Câu 246. Không có cánh mà lại có đuôi
Những toan dọn cả bầu trời sạch trong (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Sao chổi.
Câu 247. Không có quả, chẳng có cây
Thế mà có hạt rụng đầy nơi nơi
Cỏ cây thấy rụng thì vui
Loài vật thấy rụng tìm nơi ẩn mình? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Hạt mưa.
Câu 248. Ngọn gì khi nhỏ, khi to – Khi hiền, khi ác ai đo thấu lòng – Thuận vui ai cũng bạn cùng – Nhỡ tay trái ý trăm rừng cũng tan? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Ngọn lửa.
Câu 249. Cái gì lỏng ở quanh đây – Nắng lên kết cánh mà bay về trời – Lạnh thì trở lại xuống chơi – Chờ khi gặp nóng tức thời bay lên? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Nước.
Câu 250. Tháng nào có tết thiếu nhi
Múa lân, ăn bánh lại đi rước đèn
Tháng nào có tết trung nguyên
Tháng nào thêm tuổi, thêm tiền bao phong?
(Đố là tháng nào?)
Đáp án: Tháng sáu, tháng tám âm lịch, tháng giêng âm lịch.
Câu 251. Một con gà trống và một con gà mái thi nhau bơi qua sông, hỏi con nào đến đích trước?
Đáp án: Không con nào vì gà không bơi được.
Câu 252. Phía trước bạn là quảng trường xanh, sau lưng bạn là quảng trường trắng, vậy quảng trường đỏ ở đâu?
Đáp án: Ở Nga.
Câu 253. Tốc độ quy định tối đa của một vận động viên trong cuộc thi chạy marathon là bao nhiêu?
Đáp án: Không có quy định, chạy càng nhanh càng tốt.
Câu 254.Ngày tháng mười chưa cười đã tối. Đêm tháng mấy chưa nằm đã sáng?
Đáp án: Tháng năm.
Câu 255. Vào tháng nào con người sẽ ngủ ít nhất trong năm?
Đáp án: Tháng 2 (vì tháng 2 có 28 ngày).
Câu 256.Khi nào chúng ta nhìn vào số 2 nhưng lại nói là 10?
Đáp án: Khi nhìn vào đồng hồ.
Câu 257. Như bạn biết, 5 chia cho 5 thì bằng 1. Nếu bạn Tí có 5 cục kẹo chia đều cho 5 người bạn của mình, thì bạn Tí còn mấy cục kẹo?
Đáp án: Không còn cục nào cả.
Câu 258. Ngày đầu tiên đi học, Lan đọc hết 2 quyển sách, ngày kế tiếp mẹ cho 9 quyển sách và Lan mỗi ngày đọc 1 quyển sách. Vậy tới hết ngày thứ 7 thì Lan đọc được bao nhiêu quyển sách?
Đáp án: 8 quyển sách.
Câu 259. Ruộng đồng nứt nẻ chân chim
Lúa mầu khô héo, cá tìm chỗ sâu
Ngày đêm tát mẻ miệng gầu
Mong sao thủy lợi đi đầu tưới tiêu? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Hạn hán.
Câu 260. Ầm ầm cuốn tự ngoài khơi
Dâng cao, nước ngập, sóng dồi hung hăng
Cuốn trôi nhà cửa xóm làng
Phá đê, tàn hại mùa màng, thuyền ghe? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Bão lụt.
Câu 261. Trong truyện “Cô bé quàng khăn đỏ”, bà tiên xuất hiện khi nào?
Đáp án: Trong truyện không có bà tiên.
Câu 262. Phương tiện nào được sử dụng trong bài hát “12 giờ”?
Đáp án: Xe đạp.
Câu 263. Xe nào không bao giờ giảm đi?
Đáp án: Xe tăng.
Câu 264. Môn thể thao nào mà người ta chỉ đi bộ, ít khi chạy trên cỏ?
Đáp án: Đánh golf.
Câu 265. Bonsai có nghĩa là gì?
Đáp án: Thú chơi cây cảnh.
Câu 266.Con gì biết đi nhưng người ta vẫn nói nó không biết đi? (đố chữ)
Đáp án: Con bò.
Câu 267. Khu vực Đông Nam Á gồm có bao nhiêu nước?
Đáp án: 11 nước.
Câu 268. Trong bài hát “Con bướm xuân” có nhắc đến bao nhiêu loài hoa?
Đáp án: 4 loài hoa: mai, lan, đào, hồng.
Câu 269. Rượu vang được lên men từ loại quả nào là chủ yếu?
Câu 312. Bây giờ anh hơn em 5 tuổi. Vậy sau bao nhiêu năm nữa tuổi anh bằng tuổi em?
Đáp án: Không bao giờ bằng tuổi nhau.
Câu 313.Trong các họ Việt Nam, họ nào chiếm tỉ lệ nhiều nhất?
Đáp án: Họ Nguyễn.
Câu 314. Ở Châu Phi, chim cánh cụt sống ở nước nào?
Đáp án: Nam Phi.
Câu 315. Đỏ hoe là tính từ mô tả cái gì?
Đáp án: Con mắt.
Câu 316. Sáng sớm Trường Giang lái 1 chiếc cup xanh tung tăng đi chợ mua đồ ăn sáng cho Nhã Phương. Hỏi Trường Giang mua món gì? (Đố chữ)
Đáp án: Canh súp.
Câu 317. Đầu nào không có tóc mà không phải đầu trọc?
Đáp án: Đầu máy, đầu tiên, đầu cầu.
Câu 318. Khi nào thêm vào thì nhẹ, bớt đi thì nặng?
Đáp án: Thêm tiền.
Câu 319.Cua đá, cua đinh và cáy. Con nào không thuộc bộ cua?
Đáp án: Cua đinh.
Câu 320.Dãy núi nào là sự phân chia khí hậu giữa hai miền Bắc và Nam?
Đáp án: Dãy Bạch Mã.
Câu 321. Loài chim nào không bao giờ bay, không bao giờ đi?
Đáp án: Chim đồ chơi.
Câu 322. Đường thốt nốt là đặc sản của tỉnh nào?
Đáp án: An Giang.
Câu 323. “Hoàng tử mưa” là biệt danh của ca sĩ nào?
Đáp án: Sơn Tùng MTP.
Câu 324. “Công chúa bong bóng” là biệt danh của ai?
Đáp án: Bảo Thy.
Câu 325. “Thân hình đã chết từ lâu, mà hai con mắt, bộ râu vẫn còn” là cái gì?
Đáp án: Gốc tre khô.
Câu 326.Tướng nào mà không cần ăn uống mà vẫn đánh trận được?
Đáp án: Tướng trong bàn cờ.
Câu 327. Thành đi ra đường mặc áo màu xanh lá tại sao không ai tới gần? (Đố chữ).
Đáp án: Xanh lá – Xa lánh.
Câu 328. Cầu vồng có mấy màu?
Đáp án: Rất nhiều màu.
Câu 329. Làm thế nào để nhìn thấu bên trong một con người?
Đáp án: Chụp CT toàn thân, chụp cắt lớp.
Câu 330.Cái gì của con chim mà lại có trên cơ thể con người?
Đáp án: Vết chân chim.
Câu 331. Tên đại dương tiếp giáp với phần đất liền của nước ta?
Đáp án: Biển Đông.
Câu 332.
Quả gì to nhỏ linh tinh
Chỗ như bát úp, chỗ hình kỳ quan
Tuổi đời cùng với thế gian
Trên quả, cây mọc tràn lan lạ lùng? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Ngọn núi.
Câu 333. Ông gì mà ti tỉ ông
Ban đêm thì thấy, trưa không ông nào
Hay là tuổi hạc đã cao
Mỏi chân ông chẳng thể nào xuống chơi! (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Ngôi sao.
Câu 334. Ma gì trông thấy hẳn hoi – Sáng lòa, xanh lét, tối trời tha ma? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Ma trơi.
Câu 335. Cuộc đời vô sắc vô hình
Thân tôi trôi nổi, bồng bềnh đó đây
Có tôi, người vật, cỏ cây
Đều sinh sống được, tôi hay giúp đời?
(Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Không khí.
Câu 336. Cái gì ở khắp mọi nơi
Dài trăm cây số, mắt người khó trông
Mọi sinh vật, mọi côn trùng
Nếu không có nó, khó lòng tồn sinh?
(Đó là gì?)
Đáp án: Gió.
Câu 337.Khi người gọi là chị
Lúc người gọi là ông
Làm tôi bối rối trong lòng
Đêm đêm mới dám ra trông mọi người?
(Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Chị Hằng (mặt trăng).
Câu 338. Vừa bằng cái vung
Mà vùng xuống ao
Người đào chẳng thấy
Người lấy chẳng được?
(Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Mặt trăng.
Câu 339. Cái chi quê ở trên trời – Đêm đêm lặng đứng ngắm người trần gian – Anh em nhiều lắm vô vàn – Đố ai đếm được rõ ràng không sai? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Ngôi sao.
Câu 340. Rõ ràng chẳng phải nồi canh – Thế mà vị mặn, nước xanh, cá nhiều? (Đố là gì?)
Đáp án: Biển.
Câu 341. “Lan lên lầu lấy lược Lan lấy lộn lưỡi lam Lan lên lầu lấy lại”. Trong câu trên có bao nhiêu chữ L?
Đáp án: 1.
Câu 342. Trong bài hát “tiếng hát chim đa đa” cô gái bao nhiêu tuổi?
Đáp án: 15 tuổi.
Câu 343. Trong bài hát trên, tình cờ tôi gặp lại em ở đâu?
Đáp án: Trên một chuyến đò.
Câu 344. Hoa gì không phải hôm nay. (Chơi chữ)?
Đáp án: Hoa mai.
Câu 345. Gọi là tên nhưng không bắn bằng cung là gì?
Đáp án: Cái tên gọi.
Câu 346. Giả sử bạn là bác tài xế. Trên xe lúc này có Hồng và Huệ, lát sau Mai và Trang lên xe, 30 phút sau Trang, Hồng, Huệ cùng xuống xe. Hỏi bác tài xế tên gì?
Đáp án: Tên người đang trả lời đáp án.
Câu 347. Con gì bỏ đầu bỏ đuôi thành con chim (Đố chữ)
Đáp án: Con Cóc (Bỏ chữ c đi).
Câu 348. Lão hạc trong tác phẩm “Lão hạc” tự tử bằng cách nào?
Đáp án: Ăn bả chó.
Câu 349. Con công bị chết thì gọi là gì. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Công tử.
Câu 350. Hoàn thành câu tục ngữ sau:
Ăn quả nhớ kẻ trồng cây
Ăn khoai nhớ kẻ…
Đáp án: Cho dây mà trồng.
Câu 351.Khi đổ bánh xèo nó kêu xèo, vậy khi đổ bánh bèo nó kêu sao?
Đáp án: Nó không kêu.
Câu 352. Người trưởng thành sẽ có bao nhiêu cái răng?
Đáp án: 32 cái răng.
Câu 353. Tranh nào không vẽ bằng bút hay màu?
Đáp án: Tranh cử, tranh thủ, tranh cãi.
Câu 354. Hồng gì không ăn được nhưng ai cũng thích. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Hồng Nhan.
Câu 355.Bạc gì mà không bị phai màu. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Bạc phận.
Câu 356. Quả gì càng nặng càng dễ khóc. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Quả lê.
Câu 357. Liệt kê 3 bài hát có từ “em” của ca sỹ Hương Tràm?
Đáp án: Với em là mãi mãi, em vẫn chờ, em, anh thế giới và em.
Câu 358.Ngày nào đã có từ rất lâu nhưng không ai thấy?
Đáp án: Ngày xửa ngày xưa.
Câu 359. Vòng xoay nhà thờ Đức Bà ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh có tên gọi là gì?
Đáp án: Công xã Pari.
Câu 360.Vòng xoay Hồ con Rùa ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh còn có tên gọi khác là gì?
Đáp án: Công trường quốc tế.
Câu 361. Quả gì không ai muốn ăn?
Đáp án: Quả báo.
Câu 362. Công nào không có lông. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Công lý.
Câu 363. Công nào không biết múa mà lại biết đá bóng?
Đáp án: Công Phượng.
Câu 364. Quả gì thêm huyền thì ngọt, thêm sắc thì chua. (Đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Quả dừa – Quả dứa.
Câu 365. Con gì đầu chuột, đuôi heo?
Đáp án: Con giáp.
Câu 366.Vòng xoay chợ Bến Thành ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh còn có tên gọi khác là gì?
Đáp án: Công trường Quách Thị Trang.
Câu 367. Vòng xoay bến Bạch Đằng ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh còn có tên gọi khác là gì?
Đáp án: Công trường Mê Linh.
Câu 368. Năm 2016, tổng thống Obama đã thưởng thức đặc sản gì ở Hà Nội?
Đáp án: Bún chả.
Câu 369.Nước nào nóng nhất?
Đáp án: Nước sôi.
Câu 370.Sân bay nào không ở trên mặt đất?
Đáp án: Sân bay trên tàu.
Câu 371.Ở đâu ngựa có thể qua sông, voi thì không?
Câu 376. Có 1 người đứng ở chân cầu. Ở giữa cầu có một con gấu rất hung dữ không cho ai qua cầu hết. Người đó sẽ mất hết 5 phút để đi từ chân cầu cho đến giữa cầu và con gấu cũng chỉ ngủ có 5 phút là tỉnh dậy. Hỏi người đó làm sao để qua được bên kia?
Đáp án: Đi đến giữa cầu và quay mặt ngược lại. Con gấu thức dậy tưởng người đó từ bên kia qua nên rượt trở lại. Thế là người đó đã qua được cầu!
Câu 377. Có một rổ táo, trong rổ có ba quả, làm sao để chia cho 3 người, mỗi người một quả mà vẫn còn một quả trong rổ???
Đáp án: Thì đưa cho 2 người đầu mỗi người 1 quả. Còn 1 quả trong rổ đưa nguyên cả cái rổ đựng quả táo cho người còn lại thì 3 người mỗi người đều có 1 quả, và cũng có 1 quả trong rổ!
Câu 378. Có một cây lê có 2 cành, mỗi cành có 2 nhánh lớn, mỗi nhánh lớn có 2 nhánh nhỏ, mỗi nhánh nhò có hai cái lá, cạnh mỗi cái lá có hai quả. Hỏi trên cây đó có mấy quả táo???
Đáp án: Không có quả táo nào vì lê không thể ra quả táo nào trên cây được.
Câu 379. Có 3 thằng lùn xếp hàng dọc đi vào hang. Thằng đi sau cầm 1 cái xô, thằng đi giữa cầm 1 cái xẻng, hỏi thằng đi trước cầm gì?
Đáp án: Thằng đó “cầm đầu” tức là đại ca cầm đầu, nó không phải cầm cái vật gì hết!
Câu 380.Có 2 người mặt mũi giống nhau, ngày tháng năm sinh và giờ sinh cũng giống nhau. Nhưng vì sao lại không phải là sinh đôi?
Đáp án: Vì có thể họ sinh 3, 4, 5.
Câu 381. Đám cưới kim cương là dịp để kỉ niệm vợ chồng đã chung sống với nhau được bao nhiêu năm?
Đáp án: 60 năm.
Câu 382. Đám cưới vàng là đám cưới kỉ niệm bao nhiêu năm?
Đáp án: 50 năm.
Câu 383. Thủ môn Bùi Tiến Dũng mang áo số mấy trong đội tuyển U23 Việt Nam?
Đáp án: Số 1.
Câu 384. Tuyển thủ U23 Việt Nam trước khi ra sân đá bóng còn mải mê bán son là ai?
Đáp án: Hồng Duy.
Câu 385. Theo truyền thuyết, Lê Lợi trả kiếm Thuận Thiên cho vị thần nào?
Đáp án: Thần Kim Quy.
Câu 386.Thần Kim Quy đòi kiếm của Lê Lợi ở đâu?
Đáp án: Hồ Hoàn Kiếm.
Câu 387. Hầm đường bộ dài nhất Việt Nam?
Đáp án: Hầm Hải Vân.
Câu 388. MV “Nơi này có anh” của Sơn Tùng MTP được quay ở đâu?
Đáp án: Hàn Quốc.
Câu 389. Cái gì có càng nhiều thì càng khó thấy nó?
Đáp án: Bóng tối.
Câu 390.Chồng của góa phụ có kết hôn được không?
Đáp án: Không kết hôn được.
Câu 391.Hoàn thành câu tục ngữ sau:
Phúc bất trùng lai
Họa vô đơn…?
Đáp án: Chí
Câu 392.Kể tên một món ăn không thể thiếu trong ngày lễ Tạ ơn? – Đáp án: Gà tây quay, stuffing, các loại bánh nướng, khoai…
Nhà Lan có 3 anh em, người anh đầu tên là Nhất Hào, người thứ hai tên là Nhị Hào. Hỏi người thứ 3 tên gì?
Đáp án: Lan là người thứ 3.
Câu 393. Một con ngựa được cột vào sợi dây dài 3m. Hỏi làm sao nó có thể ăn đống cỏ cách xa nó 5m?
Đáp án: Nếu sợi dây không cột cố định đầu còn lại thì không vấn đề gì.
Câu 394. Con ma xanh đập 1 phát chết, con ma đỏ đập 2 phát thì chết. Làm sao chỉ với 2 lần đập mà chết cả 2 con?
Đáp án: Đập con ma xanh trước là 1, con ma đỏ thấy thế sợ quá, mặt mày tái mét (chuyển sang xanh). Đập con ma xanh mới này nữa là đủ 2.
Câu 395. Điều gì mà chỉ có loài voi làm được, còn các loài khác thì không?
Đáp án: Đẻ ra voi con.
Câu 396.Trong mùa mưa, bốn cô gái mà lại chỉ có một chiếc dù. Chiếc dù quá nhỏ để có thể che hết cho cả bốn người nhưng kỳ lạ là cả bốn cô khi đi ra ngoài đều không cô nào bị ướt. Tại sao vậy?
Đáp án: Vì trời có mưa đâu! Chỉ là trong mùa mưa thôi mà!
Câu 397. Một chiếc máy bay chở 500 viên gạch, một viên bị rơi ra ngoài. Hỏi trên máy bay còn lại bao nhiêu viên gạch?
Đáp án: 499 viên.
Câu 398. Kể ra ba bước để cho một con voi vào một cái tủ lạnh?
Đáp án: 1. Mở tủ lạnh. 2. Cho con voi vào. 3. Đóng tủ lạnh lại.
Câu 399.Kể ra bốn bước để cho một con hươu vào trong tủ lạnh?
Đáp án:
1. Mở tủ lạnh.
2. Lấy con voi ra.
3. Cho con hươu vào.
4. Đóng tủ lạnh.
Câu 400. Hôm nay là sinh nhật của vua sư tử. Tất cả muông thú đều có mặt ở bữa tiệc trừ một con. Tại sao?
Đáp án: Bởi vì con hươu vẫn ở trong tủ lạnh.
Câu 401.Con chó có thể cắn đứt sợi dây điện mà không bị gì. Tại sao?
Đáp án: Dây điện không có cắm điện.
Câu 402.Tên gọi của 1 loài hoa đi khắp thế giới là gì? (đố chữ)
Đáp án: Hoa hậu, Hoa mặt trời.
Câu 403.Tháng 2 nào có 30 ngày?
Đáp án: Tháng 2 âm lịch.
Câu 404. Rau gì không trồng không tưới, muôn hình muôn vẻ miệng cười khen ngon (đố chữ)?
Đáp án: Rau câu.
Câu 405. Cây gì có hai cái càng?
Đáp án: Cây kéo.
Câu 406. Thứ gì xuất khẩu thì được, nhập khẩu thì không?
Đáp án: Lời nói.
Câu 407.Trước khi có những phương tiện liên lạc hiện đại thì con người liên lạc ở khoảng cách xa bằng cách gì?
Đáp án: Gửi thư bằng bồ câu.
Câu 408.Thành phố nào ở miền Tây Nam Bộ được mệnh danh là “Tây Đô”?
Đáp án: Cần Thơ.
Câu 409.Đũa ăn khác đũa thần ở điểm cơ bản nào?
Đáp án: Đũa ăn có 2 chiếc còn đũa thần có 1 chiếc.
Câu 410.Trong các loại lò, lò gì không dùng để nấu?
Đáp án: Lò luyện thi, lò xo.
Câu 411. Chồng của chị dâu mình thì là gì của mình?
Đáp án: Anh ruột.
Câu 412. Nguyễn Du Viết truyện Kiều dựa vào tác phẩm nào?
Đáp án: Thi Vân Kiều truyện.
Câu 413. Chỉ có hai thứ chúng ta không thể ăn vào bữa tối. Đó là gì?
Đáp án:Bữa sáng và bữa trưa.
Câu 414. Hãy làm một phép toán cộng đơn giản! Không được phép dùng máy tính.
Lấy 1000 rồi cộng thêm 20
Giờ cộng thêm 1000 một lần nữa.
Rồi cộng với 30.
Cộng thêm 1000 một lần nữa.
Giờ cộng thêm 40.
Cộng tiếp 1000 nữa.
Cuối cùng cộng thêm 10 nữa.
Tổng là?
Đáp án: 4100. Tớ đoán một vài bị sẽ bạn nhầm kết quả là 5000!
Câu 434. Đầu của tôi màu đổ, khi chà mạnh vào đầu của tôi thì chuyển sang màu đen. Tôi là gì?
Đáp án: Que diêm.
Câu 435. Cái gì mà máy tính bàn không thể làm được như laptop?
Đáp án: Gập lại.
Câu 436. Cá gì chỉ sống được 1 ngày?
Đáp án: Cá tháng 4.
Câu 437.Trong bộ truyện tranh “Thám từ Conan”, dụng cụ đầu tiên tiến sĩ Agasa phát minh cho Conan là gì?
Đáp án: Nơ biến đổi giọng nói.
Câu 438. Biên Hòa, Đà Lạt, Tây Ninh, thành phố nào giáp với biển?
Đáp án: Không có thành phố nào.
Câu 439. Hollywood nằm ở bang nào của nước Mỹ?
Đáp án: Canifornia.
Câu 440. Cái gì yêu cầu bạn phải trả lời nhưng lại không hỏi bất kỳ câu hỏi nào?
Đáp án: Cái điện thoại!
Câu 441. Nếu 3 con mèo bắt được 3 con chuột trong 3 phút thì cần bao lâu để 100 con mèo bắt được 100 con chuột?
Đáp án: Vẫn 3 phút thôi!
Câu 442. Tôi như một dải băng, tôi được mẹ thiên nhiên tạo ra, tôi băng qua bầu trời, tôi là ai?
Đáp án: Cầu vồng.
Câu 443. Khi nào thì 99 lớn hơn 100?
Đáp án: Một cái lò vi sóng.
Câu 444. Thông thường thì khi bạn bấm “99” trên lò thì nó sẽ chạy trong 1 phút 39s.
Nhưng nếu bạn bấm “100” thì nó chỉ chạy trong 1 phút.
Con gì mà khi ở dưới nước màu đen nhưng khi lên cạn lại màu đỏ?
Đáp án: Con tôm hùm (Loài tôm khi bị luộc chín đều có màu đỏ).
Câu 445. Cái gì mất đầu vào buổi sáng và có lại đầu vào buổi tối?
Đáp án: Cái gối!
Câu 446. Cái gì có 4 ngón tay thậm chí có cả ngón cái nhưng nó không sống?
Đáp án: Găng tay.
Câu 447. Có 1 người đứng ở chân cầu. Ở giữa cầu có một con gấu rất hung dữ không cho ai qua cầu hết. Người đó sẽ mất hết 5 phút để đi từ chân cầu cho đến giữa cầu và con gấu cũng chỉ ngủ có 5 phút là tỉnh dậy. Hỏi người đó làm sao để qua được bên kia?
Đáp án: Đi đến giữa cầu và quay mặt ngược lại. Con gấu thức dậy tưởng người đó từ bên kia qua nên rượt trở lại. Thế là người đó đã qua được cầu!
Câu 448. Ở Việt Nam, một thằng mù và ba thằng điếc đi ăn phở, mỗi người ăn một tô. Mỗi tô phở là 10 ngàn đồng. Hỏi ăn xong họ phải trả bao nhiêu tiền?
Đáp án: Họ phải trả 20 ngàn đồng vì 1 thằng mù và ba của thằng điếc là 2 người ăn!
Câu 449. Giả sử ta có 1 khúc vải, cắt nó ra làm 100 khúc, thời gian để cắt 1 khúc vải là 5 giây. Hỏi nếu cắt liên tục không ngừng nghỉ thì trong bao lâu sẽ cắt xong???
Đáp án: 495 giây bởi vì 99 khúc (khúc cuối cùng ko phải cắt) X 5 giây = 495 giây!
Câu 450. Ở một xứ nọ, có luật lệ rằng: Ai muốn diện kiến nhà vua thì phải nói một câu. Nếu câu nói thật thì sẽ bị chém đầu, còn nếu là dối thì bị treo cổ. Vậy để gặp được nhà vua của xứ đó, ta phải nói như thế nào?
Đáp án: Để gặp được nhà vui, người đó phải nói “tôi sẽ bị treo cổ!”.
Câu 451. “Lòng lang dạ thú”, lang ở đây là con gì?
Đáp án: Lang ở đây là con sói.
Câu 452. Đằng sau màn đêm hắc ám của thứ 6 ngày 13 là gì?
Đáp án: Là ngày thứ 7 ngày 14.
Câu 453.Da tôi trắng trẻo mà chỉ chơi với anh bạn đen thỏ nhám. Chúng tôi là ai?
Đáp án: Cuốn vở và cây bút chì.
Câu 454.Một người đàn ông trung niên ở trong một vùng dân cư được hơn 3 năm qua nhưng lại bị một chứng bệnh. Đó là bệnh gì? (Đố chữ)
Đáp án: Dư cân.
Câu 455. Theo phong tục dân gian, con đầu lòng gọi là con gì?
Đáp án: Con so.
Câu 456. Con thứ 2 là con gì?
Đáp án: Con dạ.
Câu 457. Trứng gà so là trứng gà gì?
Đáp án: Là lứa trứng đầu tiên của con gà khi đẻ.
Câu 458.Hoàn thành câu tục ngữ sau: Ai về… mà coi, con gái… cầm roi đi quyền?
Đáp án: Bình Định/ Bình Định.
Câu 459. Hành động gì mà con chó đứng bằng ba chân?
Đáp án: Lúc đi tiểu hoặc lúc bắt tay.
Câu 460. Thành phố nào có diện tích tự nhiên lớn nhất Việt Nam?
Đáp án: Hà Nội.
Câu 461. Hương Tràm đã phát hành bài hát cuối cùng nào trước khi tạm dừng sự nghiệp ca hát?
Đáp án: Ra là em quá mong manh.
Câu 462. Trong bài hát “Đừng yêu nữa em mệt rồi” vài điều khi yêu mà nữ ca sĩ muốn gửi gắm là gì?
Đáp án: Một là không nói dối, hai là không nói dối nhiều lần.
Câu 463. Trong các môn thể thao , môn nào càng lùi thì càng thắng?
Đáp án: Môn kéo co.
Câu 464. Quanh mình tua tủa hạt gai, chín lại đỏ rực như than trong lò. Đó là quả gì?
Đáp án: Quả gấc.
Câu 465. Trong tiếng Việt, tìm một từ vừa có tên gọi 1 loài động vật, vừa có tên gọi loài thực vật?
Đáp án: Trứng gà.
Câu 466. Người nước nào thiết kế nên tượng nữ thần tự do (Mỹ)?
Đáp án: Nước Pháp.
Câu 467.Nhà trắng, Lầu năm góc, Tòa tháp đôi New York, đâu là tòa nhà có diện tích lớn nhất của nước Mỹ?
Đáp án: Lầu năm góc.
Câu 468.Thợ nề là tên gọi khác của cộng việc gì?
Đáp án: Thợ hồ.
Câu 469. Con người hiện đại thấy được khủng long bạo chúa ở đâu?
Đáp án: Qua phim ảnh, công viên khủng long.
Câu 470. Khung long bạo chúa đi bằng bao nhiêu chân?
Đáp án: Bằng 2 chân.
Câu 471. Hậu duệ của khủng long thời nay phần lớn là cá, chim, thằn lằn hay rắn?
Đáp án: Chim.
Câu 472.Tam Kì, Đã Nẵng, Huế, Vinh, đâu là thành phố có diện tích lớn nhất miền Trung nước ta hiện nay?
Đáp án: Đà Nẵng.
Câu 473.Có một cây lê có 2 cành, mỗi cành có 2 nhánh lớn, mỗi nhánh lớn có 2 nhánh nhỏ, mỗi nhánh nhò có hai cái lá, cạnh mỗi cái lá có hai quả. Hỏi trên cây đó có mấy quả táo???
Đáp án: Không có quả táo nào vì lê không thể ra quả táo nào trên cây được.
Câu 474.Đố mọi người cái gì của người con gái lúc nào cũng ẩm ướt?
Đáp án: Cái lưỡi.
Câu 475.Đố mọi người chơi gì mà càng chơi càng ra nước?
Đáp án: Chơi cờ.
Câu 476.Bên trái đường có một căn nhà xanh, bên phải đường có một căn nhà đỏ. Vậy, nhà trắng ở đâu ?
Đáp án: Ở mỹ.
Câu 477. Có 3 người tự nhận Thiên là em trai của họ, nhưng hỏi lại Thiên thì Thiên lại nói mình đâu có anh trai nào ? Theo mọi người 3 người kia ai là người nói không đúng?
Đáp án: Không có ai nói dối cả vì 3 người đó là 3 chị gái của Thiên.
Câu 478.Đố mọi người có cái gì mà khi bạn gọi nó không bao giờ xuất hiện dù có đánh chết
Đáp án: Sự im lặng.
Câu 479. Năm ông cùng ở một nhà
Tình huynh nghĩa đệ vào ra thuận hòa
Bốn ông tuổi đã lên ba
Một ông đã già lại mới lên hai.
Đố là cái gì?
Đáp án: 5 ngón tay.
Câu 480. Vật dụng gì đặc trưng của dân tộc Thái được đưa vào bài hát?
Đáp án: Chiếc khăn Piêu.
Câu 481. Hoàn thành câu tục ngữ:
“Buôn có bạn, bán có…”
Đáp án: Phường.
Câu 482.Cái gì càng to càng dễ vỡ?
Đáp án: Quả bóng bay.
Câu 483. Độc gì có trúng cũng không chết?
Đáp án: Độc đắc.
Câu 484. Trên ngực của Captain America có hình gì?
Câu 486.Bản gốc của phim “Tháng năm rực rỡ” tên gì?
Đáp án: Sunny.
Câu 487.Trong truyện, Doremon học lớp mất?
Đáp án: Doremon không đi học.
Câu 488. Nhân vật Chaien trong Doremon học hát bài nào hay nhất?
Đáp án: Chaien hát bài nào cũng dở.
Câu 489.Cái gì càng trắng càng bẩn?
Đáp án: Cái bảng.
Câu 490. Natri Clorua có tên gọi thông thường là gì?
Đáp án: Muối ăn.
Câu 491.Chỉ nào không dùng để may quần áo?
Đáp án: Chỉ nha khoa.
Câu 492. Chỉ nào mà ai cũng thích và muốn có?
Đáp án: Chỉ Vàng.
Câu 493. Cá nào biết bay?
Đáp án: Cá chuồn.
Câu 494.Loài heo nào không có cả thịt lẫn mỡ?
Đáp án: Heo đất.
Câu 495. Heo nào có cả thịt lẫn mỡ?
Đáp án: Heo thật, heo ăn thịt.
Câu 496. Bông nào biết nói?
Đáp án: Bông Hậu.
Câu 497. Bán cái gì chỉ cần 4 bên đại diện?
Đáp án: Bán kết.
Câu 498.Khi nhắc đến cối xay gió, người ta thường nghĩ đến đất nước nào?
Đáp án: Hà Lan.
Câu 499. Với con người, thời điểm tốt nhất để đi ngủ là khi nào?
Đáp án: Là khi buồn ngủ.
Câu 500.Biển nào nhỏ nhất?
Đáp án: Biển số nhà, biển số xe.
Vòng 2 – Mùa 2 – tập 12 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Kha Ly và Thùy Anh
Câu 1. Con người có bao nhiêu ngón tay có 3 đốt? – Đáp án: 8 ngón.
Câu 2. “Trái tim lầm lỡ để trên đầu. Nỏ thần vô ý trao tay giặc” là câu thơ của nhà thơ nào? – Đáp án: Nhà thơ Tố Hữu.
Câu 3. Hai câu thơ trên nói về nhân vật nào? – Đáp án: Mị Châu – Trọng Thủy.
Câu 4. Có 4 đội bóng đá thi vòng tròn 1 lượt. Vậy sẽ có tổng cộng bao nhiêu trận? – Đáp án: 6 trận.
Câu 5. Loài thú duy nhất nào biết đẻ trứng? – Đáp án: Thú mỏ vịt.
Câu 6. Trong phi Tây Du Kí, thầy trò Đường Tăng phải trải qua bao nhiêu kiếp nạn? – Đáp án: 81 kiếp nạn.
Câu 7. Đường Tăng đặt tên cho Tôn Ngộ Không là gì? – Đáp án: Tôn Hành Giả.
Câu 8. Xoài tặng, xoài cát, xoài mút, xoài kẹo, xoài lắc từ nào khác với tư còn lại? – Đáp án: Xoài mút (địa danh).
Câu 9. Lâm Đồng, Bình Thuận, Ninh Thuận tỉnh nào có thành phố mang tên dài nhất Việt Nam? – Đáp án: Ninh Thuận (Phan Ranh Tháp Chàm).
Câu 10. Độc huyền cầm là tên gọi khác của loại đàn nào? – Đáp án: Đàn bầu.
Câu 11. “Của biếu là của lo, của cho là của nợ” là câu nói xuất hiện trong sự tích nào của Việt Nam? – Đáp án: Sự tích dưa hấu.
Vòng 3 – Mùa 2 – tập 12 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Hùng Thuận và Phương Lan
Câu 1. Bông gì cứng nhất (chơi chữ)? – Đáp án: Bông tê – Bê tông
Câu 2. Đài nào không phát hình cũng chẳng phát tiếng? – Đáp án: Đài sen, đài tưởng niệm, đài hoa
Câu 3. Con gì thân to như người, thêm huyền bỏ nặng đất cây ươm trồng (đố chữ)? – Đáp án: Vượn.
Câu 4. Rắn đuôi chuông, rắn đuôi đỏ, răn đuôi nhện. Loại rắn nào không có độc? – Đáp án: cả 3 con.
Câu 5. Bánh gì nghe rất vui tai, tên nghe rất giống để nhai hàng ngày. (đố chữ)? – Đáp án: Bánh răng.
Câu 6. Lá gì bay xa nhất? – Đáp án: Lá thư.
Câu 7. Hai chú chó cùng nhau thi chạy, chú chó A chạy nhanh hơn chú chó B và về đích trước tiên. Vậy chú chó nào đổ nhiều mồ hôi hơn? – Đáp án: Chó không có tuyến mồ hôi.
Câu 8. Dịch hạch, dịch vị, dịch tả, dịch tễ đâu là chỉ một loại bệnh? – Đáp án: Dịch hạch, dịch tả.
Câu 9. Cái gì tuy nhẹ mà vẫn phải nặng. (đố chữ)? – Đáp án: Chữ “nhẹ”.
Câu 2. Điền vào chỗ trống: Khôn… dại…? (Gợi ý: Địa điểm) – Đáp án: Nhà – Chợ.
Câu 3. Điền vào chỗ trống: Khôn… dại…? (Gợi ý: Thời gian) – Đáp án: 3 năm – 1 giờ.
Câu 4. Trong bảng xếp hạng những người đẹp nhất thế giới, Lâm Vỹ Dạ đứng cuối cùng, hỏi Lâm Vỹ Dạ có đẹp hay không? – Đáp án: Lâm Vỹ Dạ đẹp.
Câu 5. Có 2 người cùng đi đào kho báu, đào được một lúc thì một người mệt quá, liền đặt tay lên vai người kia? Hỏi người đó nói gì? (Gợi ý: tên một quốc gia) – Đáp án: Bồ Đào Nha.
Câu 6. Trong World Cup, đội bóng nào thương lan nhất? (Đố chữ) – Đáp án: Ba Lan.
Câu 7. Cây gì nghe tên như đã hết. Nhưng thực tế thì nó vẫn sống và ra hoa kết trái? – Đáp án: Cây tiêu.
Câu 8. Mạc Đăng Khoa lầm lũi sống trong hang, thứ bảy ngậm ngùi đi thi nhanh như chớp mà quen khép cửa hang thì gọi là gì? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Hở hang.
Câu 9. Rắn gì có hai chân? – Đáp án: Thanh xà, bạch xà, không có rắn gì 2 chân.
Câu 10. Hạt gì không hái không khều mà nó tự rơi? – Đáp án: Hạt mưa.
Vòng 2 – Mùa 2 – tập 10 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Lâm Vỹ Dạ và Lê Nhân
Câu 1. Trường gì không có học sinh học mà không phải trường đời? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Trường Giang
Câu 2. Trái lê rớt xuống sông thì gọi là gì? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Lê Giang.
Câu 3. Đầu xuân cây lê ra lá thì gọi là gì? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Lê Lộc.
Câu 4. Trái lê thích hát karaoke thật lớn gọi là gì? – Đáp án: Lê la.
Câu 5. Nhắm mắt ném phi tiêu một cách vội vàng thì gọi là gì? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Phóng đại.
Câu 6. Vì sao quả chuối có hình dáng cong? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Do lực hút trái đất.
Câu 7. Khi ăn táo, Đức nhìn thấy 1 con sâu, Đức sợ. Khi ăn thêm một miếng nữa, Đức thấy 2 con sâu, Đức sợ hơn. Vậy Đức nhìn thấy bao nhiêu con sâu là sợ nhất? – Đáp án: Thấy nửa con là sợ rồi, vì đã cắn vào miệng.
Câu 8. Bé Ba có một con búp bê barbie, bé Bi có 3 viên bi, ba của bé Bi có con baba. Hỏi bé Bi và bé Ba có bao nhiêu viên bi? – Đáp án: 3 viên bi.
Câu 9. Người 2 mặt có bao nhiêu mặt? – Đáp án: Có 1 mặt.
Câu 10. Con nhện có bao nhiêu chân? – Đáp án: 8 chân.
Vòng 3 – Mùa 2 – tập 10 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Mạc Văn Khoa và Hữu Bằng
Câu 1. Điểm gì ăn được? – Đáp án: Điểm tâm.
Câu 2. Kể tên 5 món đồ bằng cao su? – Đáp án: Dây chun, búa su, bao cao su, xăm xe, lốp xe.
Câu 3. Anh Đức trồng khế có cành chìa sang sân nhà Lâm Vỹ Dạ thì gọi là gì? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: bắt bẻ.
Câu 5. Người nhện có khả năng đặc biệt sau khi bị con gì cắn? – Đáp án: Con nhện.
Câu 6. Người dơi có khả năng đặc biệt sau khi bị con gì cắn? – Đáp án: Không bị con gì cắn.
Câu 7. Vậy người chơi Nhanh như chớp sẽ có khả năng đặc biệt gì khi bị Trường Giang cắn? – Đáp án: kêu đau.
Câu 8. Trong phim Tây Du ký, Đường Tăng họ gì? – Đáp án: Trần Huyền Trang.
Câu 9. Tác giả của bộ tiểu thuyết Tây Du Ký là ai? Đáp án: Ngô Thừa Ân.
Câu 10. Thầy trò Đường Tăng đi Tây Trúc thỉnh kinh. Vậy Tây Trúc ngày nay là ở đâu? – Đáp án: Ấn Độ.
Câu 11. Làm thế nào để biết tuổi một con rùa? – Đáp án: Đếm những ô trên cái mai.
Vòng 4 – Mùa 2 – tập 10 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Anh Đức và Lê Nhân
Câu 1. Lưỡi có thể chạm mũi không? – Đáp án: Có (con chó).
Câu 2. Salsa, rumba, chachacha, vừa nhảy vừa la, ha ha ha. Câu trên có mấy chữ A? – Đáp án: 12 chữ A.
Câu 3. Xe lu, xe tuần lộc, xe tải, xe nước mía, xe hủ tiếu, xe cá viên viên, cùng chạy trên đường. Hỏi tổng cộng có bao nhiêu tài xế? – Đáp án: 2 tài xế (xe lu và xe tải)
Câu 4. Tên trộm vào nhà người ta lần thứ hai thì gọi là gì? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Vô lại.
Câu 5. Làm sao vừa ngáp vừa hắt xì? – Đáp án: Không thể làm 2 việc này cùng lúc.
Câu 6. Trộn mà đỏ với màu xanh nước biển ra màu gì? – Đáp án: Màu tím.
Câu 7. Khi Thành 6 tuổi, Thành gấp đôi tuổi em mình. Vậy khi Thành 60 tuổi thì em Thành bao nhiêu tuổi? – Đáp án: Em Thành 57 tuổi.
Câu 8. Bép xép, bộp chộp, bập bẹ. Từ nào chỉ tính cách con người? – Đáp án: Bép xép và bộp chộp.
Câu 9. Trong tiếng Việt có bao nhiêu thanh điệu? – Đáp án: 6 thanh điệu (Thanh ngang, thanh hỏi, thanh ngã, thanh sắc, thanh huyền, thanh nặng).
Câu 10. Làm lưới đánh cá dởm không bán được thì gọi là gì? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Lỗ to.
Vòng 5 vòng đặc biệt Nhanh như chớp Mạc Văn Khoa, Lâm Vỹ Dạ, Anh Đức
Vòng 1 – Mùa 2 – tập 9 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Lương Minh Trang và B Trần
Câu 1. Trong các loài vật, con nào nhìn giống con heo nhất? – Đáp án: Con lợn
Câu 2. Sông gì nghe tên là thấy giàu rồi? – Đáp án: Sông Tiền
Câu 3. Tôn Ngộ Không là người hay khỉ? – Đáp án: Là khỉ
Câu 4. Tôn Ngộ Không có bao nhiêu phép biến hóa? – Đáp án: 72 phép biến hóa
Câu 5. Trư Bát Giới có bao nhiêu phép biến hóa? – Đáp án: 36 phép biến hóa
Câu 6. Sa tăng có bao nhiêu phép biến hóa? – Đáp án: 18 phép biến hóa
Câu 7. Bạch Long Mã có bao nhiêu phép biến hóa? – Đáp án: 9 phép biến hóa
Câu 8. Đường Tăng có bao nhiêu phép biến hóa? – Đáp án: Không có
Câu 9. Làng Vũ đại của Nam Cao ở ngoài đời thực thuộc tỉnh nào? – Đáp án: Hà Nam
Câu 10. Trong bài hát “Búp bê bằng bông” bươm bướm bay bỏ ai? – Đáp án: Bỏ bạn
Vòng 2 – Mùa 2 – tập 9 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Emily và Huỳnh Phương
Câu 1. Hari thuận tay trái thì Hari sẽ bước chân nào lên trước? – Đáp án: Chân nào cũng được
Câu 2. Bộ phận nào trong cơ thể con người không xương nhưng dễ bị gãy? – Đáp án: Lưỡi
Câu 3. Bò mẹ ham chơi không lo cho con thì gọi là gì? – Đáp án: Bỏ bê
Câu 4. Màn gì có nhiều màu sắc nhất? – Đáp án: Màn ảnh
Câu 5. Màn gì không che được mà có thể ăn được? – Đáp án: Màn thầu
Câu 6. Màn gì che được tất cả mọi vật trên đời? – Đáp án: Màn đêm
Câu 7. Hãy kể tên ba loại bánh có hình chóp? – Đáp án: Bánh ít, bánh giò, Bánh ú
Câu 8. Ngô Kiến Huy khờ dại thì gọi là gì (đố chữ)? – Đáp án: Ngây ngô
Câu 9. Nhà Giang trồng bưởi ra rất nhiều trái, nhưng Hari tới chơi lại bảo toàn đủ đu thì gọi là gì (đố chữ)? – Đáp án: Sai trái
Câu 10. Có 2 con tôm xanh xuất phát từ 1 điểm, 1 con tôm chiều dài 2cm, còn 1 con 5cm, đích nằm ở cách đó 10cm. Hỏi con nào về đích trước? – Đáp án: Không con nào về đích được vì tôm bơi lùi
Vòng 3 – Mùa 2 – tập 9 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Bigdaddy và Vinh Dâu
Câu 1. Hari mua ly trà sữa hết 53 nghìn và đưa 100 nghìn cho người bán. Hỏi Hari nên đưa thêm bao nhiêu để người bán hàng có thể thối lại chẵn 50 nghìn? – Đáp án: 3 nghìn
Câu 2. Muốn cơ thể tràn đầy năng lượng thì phải có gì? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Lương phải nặng
Câu 3. Bông gì không bao giờ nở? – Đáp án: Bông băng
Câu 4. Mượn gì không trả cũng không sao? – Đáp án: Mượn rượu tỏ tình
Câu 5. Trên đời nay ai giống bạn nhất? – Đáp án: Bạn ở trong gương
Câu 6. Cái gì càng to càng nhỏ? – Đáp án: Con cua
Câu 7. Trái gì không thể sút vào lưới được? – Đáp án: Trái đất
Câu 8. Mình điều khiển một chiếc xe va mạnh vào chiếc xe khác nhưng không bị thương còn cười ha hả. Vì sao? – Đáp án: Vì đây là trò chơi xe đụng
Câu 9. Sát thủ đã phải lòng người khách đã thuê mình? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Thích khách
Câu 10. Trong truyện “Vợ chồng A Phủ” của Tô Hoài, vợ của A Phủ tên gì? – Đáp án: Mị
Vòng 4 – Mùa 2 – tập 9 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Emily và Huỳnh Phương
Câu 1. Loại nhẫn nào đàn ông nên có khi đi cưa cẩm phụ nữ? – Đáp án: Nhẫn nại, nhẫn nhịn
Câu 2. Loại nhẫn nào mà các ông chồng nên có khi vợ mình đang tức giận? – Đáp án: Nhẫn nhịn
Câu 3. Lông gì đá được? – Đáp án: Lông mày
Câu 4. Hai con Hổ lớn từ từ thì gọi là gì? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Dần dần
Câu 5. Kể tên hai tỉnh mà trong tên của nó có tên một loài cây? – Đáp án: Trà Vinh, Cần Thơ, Bến Tre, Cà Mau
Câu 6. “Để nguyên, thăm thẳm màn đêm, khi huyền kết bạn, bỗng nhiên sáng bừng” là chữ gì? – Đáp án: Đen
Câu 7. Bà Điểm, Bà Hom, Bà Hạt, Bà Quẹo, Bà Chiều là nói về 5 chị em ruột hay đều là tên các chợ ở TP. Hồ Chí Minh? – Đáp án: Đều là các chợ
Câu 8. Trong một trận đấu võ quyết liệt, tuy nhiên không một nam võ sĩ nào tung ra một cú đấm hay đá nào cả. Hỏi vì sao? – Đáp án: Đây là trận đấu của nữ
Câu 9. Xe cứu hỏa, xe cứu thương, xe cảnh sát đang làm nhiệm vụ và chạy cùng lúc thì xe nào được ưu tiên? – Đáp án: Xe cứu hỏa
Câu 10. Một chú lợn rất quyến rũ, đi đến đâu là mọi người nhìn theo đến đó thì gọi là gì? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Heo hút
Vòng 5 – Mùa 2 – tập 9 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa B Trần và Lương Minh Trang
Câu 1. Trong tủ lạnh có hũ mứt ghi hạn sử dụng 3 tháng, hũ củ kiệu ghi ngày sản xuất cách đây 1 tháng, hũ dưa món còn 60 ngày nữa hết hạn. Hỏi mình phải mở gì trước? – Đáp án: Mở tủ lạnh trước
Câu 2. Giường nào tuy đắt đỏ nhưng không ai muốn nằm? – Đáp án: Giường bệnh
Câu 3. Hari tung tăng đi du xuân thì thấy trên cành cây có 10 con chim. Hỏi làm cách nào Hari có thể mang 10 con chim đó về nhà ngắm? – Đáp án: Chụp ảnh
Câu 4. Con cọp không đẹp thì gọi là gì? – Đáp án: Xấu dần, xấu hổ
Câu 5. Kể tên 2 loại trái cây mà trong tên của nó có một động từ? – Đáp án: Mận, cóc, đu đủ, đào, thơm, lê
Câu 6. Bạn đi lên chùa cùng với người yêu của mình thì gọi là gì? (đố chữ) – Đáp án: Tình tự
Câu 7. Muỗi cái sống nhờ gì mà không phải thức ăn và máu? – Đáp án: Sống nhờ những người đập hụt
Câu 8. Cái gì thường đi theo mình suốt đời? – Đáp án: Cái bóng
Câu 9. Trường hợp nào phải đi thang bộ mà không đi thang máy? – Đáp án: Thang máy hư
Câu 10. Bé sơ sinh có răng màu gì? – Đáp án: Không có răng
Câu 11. Người ta gọi gấu là gì? – Đáp án: Bạn gái, người yêu, bồ
Câu 12. Tôi luôn mang giày đi ngủ. Tôi là ai? – Đáp án: Con ngựa
Vòng 6: Câu hỏi Nhanh như chớp vòng đặc biệt dành cho đội B Trần, Emily, Bigdaddy
Kể tên 20 loại trái cây có múi
Đáp án: Cam, chanh, quýt, bình bát, bòn bon, mít, sầu riêng, bưởi, na, quất, măng cụt, lựu, anh đào…
Câu hỏi Nhanh như chớp tập 8 mùa 2
Vòng 1 – Mùa 2 – tập 8 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Khổng Tú Quỳnh – Ossad
Câu 1. Người mắt to và người mắt nhỏ người nào nhìn thấy rõ hơn? – Đáp án: Đều nhìn rõ như nhau.
Câu 2. Lan tặng Mai 3 bông, Hồng tặng Huệ 3 bông. Hỏi Lan tặng Huệ mấy bông? – Đáp án: Không có bông nào.
Câu 3. Có bao nhiêu chữ C trong câu “Con cua cua con còng, con còng cưới con kiến, con kiến cưỡi con cua”? – Đáp án: 13 chữ C.
Câu 4. Con chim đà điểu bay cao nhất là bao nhiêu mét? – Đáp án: Đà điểu không biết bay.
Câu 5. Trường Giang thích đào đất rồi chui xuống ngồi thì gọi là gì? – Đáp án: Ham hố.
Câu 6. Người Hàn Quốc thường không làm gì vào đêm giao thừa? – Đáp án: Không đi ngủ để đón giao thừa.
Câu 7. Chữ gì họ một đế vương, thêm gờ vào cuối, nhà hướng lên cao? Đáp án: Tần.
Câu 8. Có 8 múi bưởi để trên đĩa, làm sao để chia cho 4 người mỗi người 2 múi nhưng vẫn còn 2 múi nằm trên đĩa? – Đáp án: Cho một người cái đĩa và cho người ấy 2 múi bưởi ấy.
Câu 9. Quê hương điện thoại Nokia nằm ở nước nào? – Đáp án: Phần Lan.
Câu 10. Đỉnh núi Olympus được nhắc đến trong thần thoại nước nào? – Đáp án: Hy Lạp.
Câu 11. Mì gói có trước hay sau mì ly? – Đáp án: Mì gói.
Vòng 2 – Mùa 2 – tập 8 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Trang Hý và Khánh Vy
Câu 1. Vé đi đến nơi nào mà dù bạn bỏ bao nhiêu tiền cũng không mua được? – Đáp án: Thiên đường.
Câu 2. Dấu gì dành cho những người thất tình? – Đáp án: Dấu mưa.
Câu 3. Trong bài hát “Dấu mưa” của ca sĩ Trung Quân idol sau khi cơn mưa đi qua, chuyện gì xảy ra? – Đáp án: “Để lại những ký ức anh và em”.
Câu 4. Trong bài “Dấu mưa” của ca sĩ Trung Quân Idol, có bao nhiêu câu “Anh yêu em”? – Đáp án: Không có câu nào.
Câu 5. Trong bài hát “Diễm xưa” của nhạc sĩ Trịnh Công Sơn, có nhiêu từ “Diễm” xuất hiện? – Đáp án: Không có từ nào.
Câu 6. Mẹ của ba của ba con heo là con gì? – Đáp án: Là con heo.
Câu 7. Mẹ của ba của ba con heo gọi ba của ba con heo là gì? – Đáp án: Gọi bằng chồng.
Câu 9. Heo gì không cần ăn một tuần vẫn sống? – Đáp án: Heo đất.
Câu 10. Trong 12 con giáp, con heo đứng sau con gì? – Đáp án: Con chó.
Câu 11. Cái gì cắt được kim cương?- Đáp án: Cái cưa kim cương.
Câu 12. Trong truyện “Công chúa ngủ trong rừng”, hoàng tử đã hôn vào má hay trán của công chúa? – Đáp án: Hôn vào môi.
Vòng 3 – Mùa 2 – tập 8 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Viruss và Kiều Trinh
Câu 1. Mạng nào bạn phải có thì mới tồn tại được? – Đáp án: Mạng người.
Câu 2. Mạng nào bạn không có vẫn sống được? – Đáp án: Mạng Internet, mạng nhện
Câu 3. Sai người sai thời điểm, sai người đúng thời điểm, đúng người đúng thời điểm. Đâu không phải là tên của một bài hát? – Đáp án: Sai người đúng thời điểm.
Câu 4. Trong bài hát “Mặt trời bé con” của nhạc sĩ Trần Tiến, cô bé và chú bé đã làm gì? – Đáp án: “Ngoài kia có cô bé nhìn qua khe… Ngoài kia có chú bé trèo cành me…”
Câu 5. Con gì ăn được con voi, không nhai không nuốt chẳng cần thớt dao? – Đáp án: Con cờ.
Câu 6. Nam 20 tuổi vào 1995 nhưng lại 15 tuổi vào 2000. Tại sao lại như thế? – Đáp án: Tại vì đây là năm trước công nguyên, số năm đếm ngược.
Câu 7. Kiều Trinh muốn Trang Hý không ngủ ba ngày thì gọi là gì? – Đáp án: Thách thức.
Câu 8. Cắn gì không cần dùng đến răng? – Đáp án: Cắn rứt lương tâm.
Câu 9. Biệt danh của đội tuyển bóng đá Nhật Bản là chiến binh Ninja xanh hay chiến binh mặt trời mọc? – Đáp án: Chiến binh Sumurai xanh.
Câu 10. Tên gọi khác của cây hoa dầu là gì? – Đáp án: Cây chò nâu.
Vòng 4 – Mùa 2 – tập 8 – Nhanh như chớp, cuộc đua giữa Trang Hý với Ossad
Câu 1. Tỉnh nào giáp với Lào và Trung Quốc? – Đáp án: Điện Biên.
Câu 2. Ốc móng tay có bao nhiêu móng? – Đáp án: Không có.
Câu 3. Nhiều người kéo nhau ra Phú Quốc chơi thì gọi là gì? – Đáp án: Đông đảo.
Câu 4. Trang Hý muốn đi dã ngoại với lớp, nhưng bị bà ngoại đóng cửa nhốt ở nhà thì gọi là gì? – Đáp án: Ngoại Khóa.
Câu 5. Con heo và con lợn khác nhau ở điểm nào mà không phải là cách gọi tên? – Đáp án: Không khác nhau (khác nhau ở vùng miền).
Câu 6. Điều gì không dậy ta trở thành người tốt mà chỉ làm ta thoải mái hơn? – Đáp án: Điều hòa.
Câu 7. Trên thế giới, châu nào nào nhỏ hơn châu đại dương? – Đáp án: Châu Đốc.
Câu 8. Giải thưởng trao cho những thành tựu xuất sắc trong điện ảnh Mỹ là gì? – Đáp án: Oscar.
Câu 9. Giải thưởng trao cho những thành tựu dở tệ trong điện ảnh Mỹ là? – Đáp án: Mâm xôi vàng.
Câu 10. Giải thưởng trao cho những thành tựu xuất sắc trong điện ảnh ở Việt Nam là? – Đáp án: Cánh diều vàng.
Câu 11. Nơi nào là nóc nhà của Đông Nam Bộ? – Đáp án: Tây Ninh, Đồng Nai, Núi Bà Đen.
Vòng 5 vòng đặc biệt Nhanh như chớp cho đội Ossad, Khánh Vy và Viruss
Cập nhật các câu đố Nhanh như chớp mùa 3 (cả nhí và người lớn) Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Kèm Đáp Án Câu 1: Ba của ba con cò gọi là gì? Ông nội con cò Câu 2: Mỏ quạ và mỏ chim cái nào cứng hơn? Như nhau Câu 3: Con thuyền cứ để 200 kg là chìm. Thuyền trưởng 50kg, con bò 148 kg, bó cỏ 2kg. Con bò ăn cỏ mập ra 2kg, ói ra 2 kg. Hỏi thuyền có chìm không? Không. Con bò ói xuống nước. Câu 4: Bộ phận nào trên cơ thể giúp chúng ta nhận biết được đồ vật có hình dạng tốt nhất? Mắt Câu 5: Khi bịt mắt, chúng ta có thể đi thẳng được không? Không được. Câu 6: Bịt mắt và bịt mũi bạn có thể nếm món ăn và biết được đó là món gì không? Được Câu 7: Cái gì mình càng cất thì mình càng thấy nó? Nhà Câu 8: Loài cá nào không có xương? Cá mập ( chỉ có sụn, không xương) hoặc cá phi lê. cập nhật những Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí Hay cho bé Câu 1. Nhiệt độ bình thường của cơ thể con người là bao nhiêu? Câu 1. 37 độ Câu 2. Người già hay dùng cây gậy chống, người trẻ thường dùng cây gậy gì? Câu 2. Gậy tự sướng (gậy chụp hình sefie) Câu 3. Hành gì vừa to vừa lớn, ăn thì không dễ ngắm lại bao la Câu 3. Hành tinh Câu 4. Sao kim còn có tên gọi dân gian khác là gì? Câu 4. Sao hôm, sao mai Câu 5. Sóng gì không có nước Câu 5. Sóng điện thoại Câu 6. Dụng cụ dùng mài và chứa mực trong viết chữ thư pháp gọi là gì Câu 6. Nghiên mực Câu 7. Bình thường bóng đèn treo trên trần nhà bao lâu thì sẽ bị tháo xuống Câu 7. Khi bóng bị hỏng Câu 8. Bàn gì không có chân mà có chữ Câu 8. Bàn là Câu 9. Số không trong số la mã được viết như nào Câu 9. Không có
CÂU HỎI ĐÁP ÁN Câu 1: Nhìn thấy mảnh thủy tinh vỡ trên sàn nhà con nên làm gì: dùng tay nhặt, dùng chổi quét, lấy keo dán các mảnh vỡ lại? Lấy chổi quét Câu 2: Ai cầm cây chổi, chăm chỉ miệt mài, quét dọn hằng ngày, phố phường sạch sẽ? cô, chú lao công Câu 3: Con mèo có nhiều hơn con vịt mấy chân? Hai Câu 4: Người mẹ tên Gà đang bế con gà tên Mèo? Hỏi có tất cả bao nhiêu chân? 4 chân Câu 5: Con gà tên Mèo đang cõng con mèo tên Gà. Hỏi có tất cả bao nhiêu chân? 6 chân Câu 6: Đướng sắt là dành cho xe chở sắt chạy hay xe chở đường chạy? Đường sắt dành cho xe lửa chạy Câu 7: Đường bộ là dành cho người đi bộ hay người làm bộ? người đi bộ Câu 8: xe máy chở nước thì được phép chạy trên đường thủy không? Không, vì đường thủy là đường dành cho tàu chạy Câu 9: Trong truyện cô bé quàng khăn đỏ, hoàng tử xuất hiện khi nào? Trong truyện cô bé quàng khăn đỏ không
Câu Hỏi Đường Lên Đỉnh Olympia Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí Mùa 3 Dùng những Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí Mùa 3 này để kiểm tra trí thông minh bé nhà bạn nhé
CÂU HỎI ĐÁP ÁN Câu 1: Nhanh như chớp nhí, chớp nhanh như nhí, nhí nha nhí nhảnh, đâu là tên của một chương trình truyền hình? Nhanh như chớp nhí Câu 2: Đâu là tên của một vị thần trong Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí: thần Thái, thần thánh, thần Thor? thần thỏ Câu 3: Hãy kể 3 loại hải sản không có xương? tôm, cua, mực Câu 4: con nào có thể sống lâu nhất: cọp, rùa, cá voi? rùa Câu 5: hoa anh đào có thể trồng ở nước nào? Hàn Quốc hay Nhật Bản? cả 2 Câu 6: Sakura, sahara, xa tui ra. Đâu là tên của một loại hoa? Sakura Câu 7: Dĩa cơm, dĩa bay cái nào con không ăn được? dĩa bay Câu 8: Chúng ta có 4 chai sữa Fristi bụng tốt và được đựng trong 2 cái túi. Số chai trong 1 túi gấp đôi số chai trong túi còn lại. Con phải đựng như thế nào để được như vậy? Bỏ mỗi túi 2 chai, sau đó bỏ túi này vào bên trong túi kia Câu 9: Chuột túi có thể nhảy qua một chiếc xe hơi nhỏ được không? được
Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí Tập 2 Tổng hợp những Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí Tập 2 cho những ai chưa xem
CÂU HỎI ĐÁP ÁN Câu 1: Đại dương nói gì với bờ biển? Không có nói gì hết Câu 2: Đường cát có cát không? Không Câu 3: Làm nghề gì mặc áo blouse trắng? Bác sĩ Câu 4: Từ “Bác” là từ dùng để gọi những người làm nghề gì? Bác sĩ, bác học, bác tài Câu 5: Lá gì không gốc không cành, Chỉ có một lá mà mình trao nhau? Lá thư Câu 6: Một dĩa thịt nướng làm sao có thể ăn được trong 2 năm? Ăn lúc giao thừa Câu 7: 1+1×2 bằng mấy? 3 Câu 8: Cái quần có 2 ống vậy cái váy có mấy ống? Một ống Câu 9: Doremi là gì của Pokemi? Không có Pokemi Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Tập 22 Trọn bộ Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Tập 22 hay nhất
CÂU ĐỐ ĐÁP ÁN Câu 1. Hạt gì không sinh ra từ cây từ trái từ hoa? Câu 1. Hạt cát Câu 2. Cà j bỏ vào miệng thì cay Câu 2. Cà ri Câu 3. Trong bài hát quả gì quả gì lăn lông lốc Câu 3. Quả bóng Câu 4. Cũng trong bài hát này, vì sao quả bóng lại lăn? Câu 4. Vì mọi người đá Câu 5. Loài sinh vật nào mà trong 2 giai đoạn của cuộc đời vừa là cây vừa là con Câu 5. Đông trùng hạ thảo Câu 6. Cái gì có 5 dòng và 4 khe Câu 6. Khuông nhạc Câu 7. Con gái nuôi của mẹ gọi con gái nuôi của bà ngoại bằng gì? Câu 7. Bằng miệng Câu 8. Cái gì đổ xuống mặt đường tạo nên đường nhựa Câu 8. Nhựa đường Câu 9. Trong ca khúc lòng mẹ của nhạc sỹ Y Vân, người mẹ được ví như ngọn núi nào. Câu 9. Không có núi Câu 10. Con gì sinh ra đã kiếm đường trốn Câu 10. Con chuồn chuồn
Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí Tập 1 Mang đến cho bạn những Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí Tập 1 đặc sắc nhất
CÂU ĐỐ ĐÁP ÁN Câu 1: Câu hát đầu tiên của bài hát Happy Birthday là gì? Happy Birthday to you Câu 2: Câu hát cuối cùng của bài hát Happy Birthday là gì? Happy Birthday to you Câu 3: Trong bài hát Cháu yêu bà, tóc của bà được ví là trắng như tuyết hay trắng như bông? Mây Câu 4: Rắn hổ mang là con của con rắn hay con của con hổ? Rắn Câu 5: Trong truyện Thỏ và Rùa, con nào chạy đến vạch đích trước? Rùa Câu 6: Người đầu trọc thì trên đầu không có gì? Không có tóc Câu 7: Đồi trọc thì trên đồi không có gì? Cây Câu 8: Người lái máy bay gọi là phi công vậy người lái xe lửa được gọi là gì? Tài xế xe lửa Câu 9: Blue là màu xanh dương hay màu xanh lá cây? Xanh dương Câu 10: Giữa trưa nhà mình cúp điện nhưng không có đèn pin thì cần thắp cái gì để có ánh sáng? Trưa vẫn sáng, không cần thắp gì cả Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí 2020 Tuyển tập bộ Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí 2020 bạn không thể không xem
CÂU HỎI ĐÁP ÁN Câu 1: Khi đi học, con được hạng nhất thì con có giỏi hay không? Có Câu 2: Trái cây hạng nhất thì trái cây có giỏi hay không? Không, vì trái cây không đi học Câu 3: Trái (quả) cam có màu gì? Màu cam Câu 4: Khi chảy máu cam thì máu cam màu gì? Màu đỏ Câu 5: Vì sao con cá chỉ sống được dưới nước mà không sống được trên bờ? Vì cá nếu ở trên bờ thì sẽ không thở được Câu 6: Con hươu cao cổ ăn cỏ như thế nào? Nó cúi xuống để gặm cỏ Câu 7: Chim di trú bay theo đội hình gì? Mũi tên Câu 8: Bộ phận nào giữ cho con sóc thăng bằng khi di chuyển từ cây này sang cây khác? Cái đuôi
Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí Tập 7 Thử tài của bạn với bộ Câu Đố Nhanh Như Chớp Nhí Tập 7
CÂU ĐỐ ĐÁP ÁN Câu 1: Lúm đồng tiền là phần nào của gương mặt? Má Câu 2: Mình có thể mượn lúm đồng tiền của bạn được không? Không Câu 3: Mình có thể mượn tiền của bạn được không? Tùy thuộc vào bạn có cho mượn hay không Câu 4: Mẹ của con chip chip xinh xắn là con gì? Con chim/ con gà Câu 5: Mẹ của con ụt ịt mũm mĩm là con gì? Con heo/ con lợn Câu 6: Mẹ của con bê béo bở là con gì? Con bò Câu 7: Bàn tay của con chuột Micky có mấy ngón? 4 ngón Câu 8: Chuột Mickey có mấy ngón chân? Không biết Câu 9: Mickey Mouse và Minnie Mouse là gì của nhau? Bạn Câu 10: Một con khỉ, một con sóc, một con chim cùng leo cây dừa thì con nào sẽ lấy được trái chuối đầu tiên? Con khỉ
CÂU ĐỐ ĐÁP ÁN Câu 1: Chôm chôm, sầu riêng, cam cái nào có gai? Sầu riêng Câu 2: Chôm chôm, sầu riêng, cam cái nào có lông? Chôm chôm Câu 3: Chôm chôm, sầu riêng, cam cái nào có hạt? Cái nào cũng có Câu 4: Chú … ở bản Đôn, chưa có ngà nên còn trẻ con. Voi con Câu 5: Nếu mình đang chạy xe mà rơi xuống ổ voi thì con voi có đau không? Không. Con voi ở sở thú Câu 6: Vòi, mào và ngà, bộ phận nào con voi không có? Mào Câu 7: 1 con voi 100 kg với ổ kiến lửa 100kg, cái nào nặng hơn? Bằng nhau Câu 8: Con kiến rơi từ tầng 10 của tòa nhà xuống đất liệu nó có chết không? Không
CÂU ĐỐ ĐÁP ÁN Câu 1: Bướm mặc áo màu gì? Không mặc áo Câu 2: Trước khi thành bướm nó là con sâu róm hay con nhộng? Muỗi cái Câu 3: Muỗi đực và muỗi cái con nào cắn người? Nhộng Câu 4: Con vật nào luôn mang giày khi đi ngủ? Ngựa Câu 5: Con ngựa nào không cưỡi được? Ngựa vằn Câu 6: Nếu con và con ngựa chạy đua thì ai đến vạch đích trước? Con ngựa Câu 7: Nếu con cá ngựa và con ngựa chạy đua với nhau thì con nào về đích trước? Con cá ngựa không chạy được Câu 8: Người có nốt ruồi là do lúc nhỏ bị ruồi bu đúng không? Không Câu 9: Nếu con nhịn một cái ợ thì con có khả năng bị xì hơi hay không?
Những câu đố hài hước, vui nhộn có đáp án
Những câu đố vui nhộn có đáp án gồm có những câu đố : câu đố vui – câu đố vui nhộn – câu đố hại não – câu đố khó – câu đố xàm … Đảm bảo bạn sẽ cười lăn với những câu đố vui dưới đây ! Tuy nhiên vui nhộn không có nghĩa là dễ vấn đáp, hãy thử xem trí tưởng tượng và óc phát minh sáng tạo của bạn đến đâu nào ! Những câu đố vui nhộn gồm có : câu đố vui nhộn có đáp án, câu đố vui nhộn vui nhộn, câu đố vui nhộn nhất, những câu đố vui nhộn, những câu đố vui nhộn vui nhộn, những câu đố vui nhộn có đáp án, câu đố hay vui nhộn, câu đố mẹo vui nhộn, câu đố dân gian vui nhộn . Cuộc thi vẽ diễn đạt nạn đói 1945 của Nước Ta … giữa Mỹ, Nhật, Nước Ta, Trung Quốc
Mỹ vẽ Việt Nam người chết chất thành đống.
Việt Nam vẽ một nhà vệ sinh và trên đó là một ổ mạng nhện.
Nhật vẽ những con người còm cõi xơ xác đứng cạnh những đống xác chết.
Trung Quốc vẽ những con người đang cắn xé giành giật nồi cơm.
Hỏi nước nào giành thắng lợi ? Tại sao ?
Đáp án – Việt Nam vì sao các bạn tự suy nghĩ nhé!
Có 1 người đứng ở chân cầu. Ở giữa cầu có một con gấu rất hung tàn không cho ai qua cầu hết. Người đó sẽ mất hết 5 phút để đi từ chân cầu cho đến giữa cầu và con gấu cũng chỉ ngủ có 5 phút là tỉnh dậy. Hỏi người đó làm thế nào để qua được bên kia ?
Đáp án – Đi đến giữa cầu và quay mặt ngược lại. Con gấu thức dậy tưởng người đó từ bên kia qua nên rượt trở lại. Thế là người đó đã qua được cầu!
Có một rổ táo, trong rổ có ba quả, làm thế nào để chia cho 3 người, mỗi người một quả mà vẫn còn một quả trong rổ ? ? ?
Đáp án – Thì đưa cho 2 người đầu mỗi người 1 quả. Còn 1 quả trong rổ đưa nguyên cả cái rổ đựng quả táo cho người còn lại thì 3 người mỗi người đều có 1 quả, và cũng có 1 quả trong rổ!
Có một cây lê có 2 cành, mỗi cành có 2 nhánh lớn, mỗi nhánh lớn có 2 nhánh nhỏ, mỗi nhánh nhò có hai cái lá, cạnh mỗi cái lá có hai quả. Hỏi trên cây đó có mấy quả táo ? ? ?
Đáp án – Không có quả táo nào vì lê không thể ra quả táo nào trên cây được
Có 3 thằng lùn xếp hàng dọc đi vào hang. Thằng đi sau cầm 1 cái xô, thằng đi giữa cầm 1 cái xẻng, hỏi thằng đi trước cầm gì ?
Đáp án – Thằng đó “cầm đầu” tức là đại ca cầm đầu, nó không phải cầm cái vật gì hết!
Có 2 người mặt mũi giống nhau, ngày tháng năm sinh và giờ sinh cũng giống nhau. Nhưng vì sao lại không phải là sinh đôi ?
Đáp án – Vì có thể họ sinh 3, 4, 5
Nhà Lan có 3 bạn bè, người anh đầu tên là Nhất Hào, người thứ hai tên là Nhị Hào. Hỏi người thứ 3 tên gì ?
Đáp án – Lan là người thứ 3
Một con ngựa được cột vào sợi dây dài 3 m. Hỏi làm thế nào nó hoàn toàn có thể ăn đống cỏ cách xa nó 5 m ?
Đáp án – Nếu sợi dây không cột cố định đầu còn lại thì không vấn đề gì.
Con ma xanh đập 1 phát chết, con ma đỏ đập 2 phát thì chết. Làm sao chỉ với 2 lần đập mà chết cả 2 con ?
Đáp án – Đập con ma xanh trước là 1, con ma đỏ thấy thế sợ quá, mặt mày tái mét (chuyển sang xanh). Đập con ma xanh mới này nữa là đủ 2.
Điều gì mà chỉ có loài voi làm được, còn những loài khác thì không ?
Đáp án – Đẻ ra voi con
Trong mùa mưa, bốn cô gái và lại chỉ có một chiếc dù. Chiếc dù quá nhỏ để hoàn toàn có thể che hết cho cả bốn người nhưng kỳ lạ là cả bốn cô khi đi ra ngoài đều không cô nào bị ướt. Tại sao vậy ?
Đáp án – Vì trời có mưa đâu! Chỉ là trong mùa mưa thôi mà!
Một chiếc máy bay chở 500 viên gạch, một viên bị rơi ra ngoài. Hỏi trên máy bay còn lại bao nhiêu viên gạch ?
Đáp án – 499 viên.
Kể ra ba bước để cho một con voi vào một cái tủ lạnh ?
Đáp án 1. Mở tủ lạnh. 2. Cho con voi vào. 3. Đóng tủ lạnh lại.
Kể ra bốn bước để cho một con hươu vào trong tủ lạnh ?
Đáp án 1. Mở tủ lạnh. 2. Lấy con voi ra. 3. Cho con hươu vào. 4. Đóng tủ lạnh
Hôm nay là sinh nhật của vua sư tử. Tất cả muông thú đều xuất hiện ở bữa tiệc trừ một con. Tại sao ?
Đáp án – Bởi vì con hươu vẫn ở trong tủ lạnh.
Làm sao mà một bà già hoàn toàn có thể đi qua một đầm lầy đầy cá sấu ?
Đáp án – Bà ấy cứ đi qua bình thường thôi vì bọn cá sấu đang đi dự tiệc sinh nhật của vua sư tử hết rồi.
Bà già bước qua sông nhưng vẫn chết. Tại sao ?
Đáp án – Nếu bạn nghĩ rằng bà ta chết đuối hoặc vì một lý do bệnh tật nào đó thì bạn sai rồi! Bà ấy chết vì viên gạch từ chiếc máy bay rơi chúng đầu ba ta!
Chỉ có hai thứ tất cả chúng ta không hề ăn vào bữa tối. Đó là gì ?
Đáp án – Bữa sáng và bữa trưa
Hãy làm một phép toán cộng đơn thuần ! Không được phép dùng máy tính. Chỉ dùng nếu bạn ra đáp án sai thôi nhé ! Nào mở màn :
Lấy 1000 rồi cộng thêm 20 Giờ cộng thêm 1000 một lần nữa. Rồi cộng với 30. Cộng thêm 1000 một lần nữa. Giờ cộng thêm 40. Cộng tiếp 1000 nữa. Cuối cùng cộng thêm 10 nữa.
Tổng là ?
Đáp án 4100. Tớ đoán một vài bị sẽ bạn nhầm kết quả là 5000!
Nếu: 1 = 6 2 = 12 3 = 18 4 = 24 5 = 30 Thì 6 = ?
Đáp án – 1 Vì ngay từ đầu ta đã có 1=6 rồi mà!
Na là con gái của Nam. Vậy thì Nam là ____ của bố Na. Điền từ còn thiếu vào phần còn thiếu ____
Đáp án – tên
Cả Tuấn và Giang đều sinh trong Tháng Mười nhưng sinh nhật của họ lại vào tháng mười hai. Tại sao lại hoàn toàn có thể như vậy ?
Đáp án – Tháng Mười là một địa danh!
Bạn sẽ nhận được tác dụng bao nhiêu khi cộng 300 lần số 3 ( Không dùng máy tính ) ?
Đáp án – 303
Cái gì nhu yếu bạn phải vấn đáp nhưng lại không hỏi bất kể câu hỏi nào ?
Đáp án – Cái điện thoại!
Nếu 3 con mèo bắt được 3 con chuột trong 3 phút thì cần bao lâu để 100 con mèo bắt được 100 con chuột ?
Đáp án – Vẫn 3 phút thôi!
Tôi như một dải băng, tôi được mẹ vạn vật thiên nhiên tạo ra, tôi băng qua khung trời, tôi là ai ?
Đáp án – Cầu vồng
Khi nào thì 99 lớn hơn 100 ?
Đáp án – Một cái lò vi sóng.
Thông thường thì khi bạn bấm “ 99 ” trên lò thì nó sẽ chạy trong 1 phút 39 s . Nhưng nếu bạn bấm “ 100 ” thì nó chỉ chạy trong 1 phút . Con gì mà khi ở dưới nước màu đen nhưng khi lên cạn lại màu đỏ ?
Đáp án – Con tôm hùm. (Loài tôm khi bị luộc chín đều có màu đỏ)
Bạn thử nghĩ xem, vào tháng nào con người sẽ ngủ tối thiểu trong năm ?
Đáp án – Tháng hai. Vì đây thường là tháng ngắn nhất trong năm (28 ngày).
Cái gì mất nguồn vào buổi sáng và có lại nguồn vào buổi tối ?
Đáp án – Cái gối!
Cái gì có 4 ngón tay thậm chí còn có cả ngón cái nhưng nó không sống ?
Đáp án – Găng tay
Một người đàn ông nghèo ngồi trong một quá rượu. Ngồi gần ông ấy là một người khác, người này có vẻ như giàu sang . Người đàn ông nghèo : Tôi có một kĩ năng cực kỳ đặc biệt quan trọng. Tôi biết gần hết những bài hát đã từng được sáng tác ra ! Người đàn ông phong phú cười lớn . Người đàn ông nghèo nói tiếp : Ông dám cá với tôi tổng thể số tiền có trong ví của ông chứ ? Tôi hoàn toàn có thể hát một bài hát nổi tiếng mà trong đó có tên của một người con gái do ông chọn . Người đàn ông giàu cười lớn lần nữa rồi nói : Tốt thôi, anh hãy hát một bài mà có tên con gái tôi : Nguyễn Julia ( Cô này lá Việt kiều á ! ) . Người đàn ông nghèo đã hát được và thắng cược số tiền. Đố bạn biết ông ta đã hát bài gì ?
Đáp án – Happy Birthday (Chúc mừng sinh nhật!). Bài hát này có thể hát với bất kỳ tên của ai trong đó!
Một cậu bé đi dạo trong rừng. Cậu đi đến một cây cầu gỗ. Trước cầu có một người đàn ông vô cùng hung tợn với một cây rìu to khủng bố . Người đàn ông kia nói : ” Cầu này do ta làm, muốn bước qua ngươi phải nói cho ta một câu. Nếu ta nghĩ câu đó là đúng thì ta sẽ bóp cổ ngươi tới chết. Còn nếu ta nghĩ ngươi nói sai thì ta sẽ chém bay đầu ngươi bằng cây rìu này ! ” . Sau một giây tâm lý cậu bé nói một cầu rồi thư thái bước qua cầu trong khi gã kia đang vò đầu tâm lý. Cậu bé đã nói câu gì ?
Đáp án – Cậu bé nói: “Ông sẽ chém bay đầu tôi bằng cây rìu đó”
Ng ta phát hiện ra xác chết của một chàng trai treo cổ chết ở nóc nhà. Dưới chân cậu ta cách khoảng chừng 20 cm đến sàn nhà là một vũng nước lớn. Hỏi cậu ta làm thế nào để hoàn toàn có thể leo lên nóc nhà mà tự tử được ?
Đáp án – Cậu ta tự tử bằng cách đứng lên tảng nước đá!
Con chó đen người ta gọi là con chó mực. Con chó vàng, người ta gọi là con chó phèn. Con chó sanh người ta gọi là con chó đẻ. Vậy con chó đỏ, người ta gọi là con chó gì ?
Đáp án – Con chó đỏ người ta gọi là con chó… đỏ. hehe!
Có 1 đàn chim đậu trên cành, người thợ săn bắn cái rằm. Hỏi chết mấy con ?
Đáp án – rằm là 15 —> chết 15 con
Cắm vào run rẩy toàn thân Rút ra nước chảy từ chân xuống sàn Hỡi chàng công tử giàu sang Cắm vào xin chớ vội vàng rút ra!
Đáp án – Đó là cái tủ lạnh!
Có 1 người đứng ở chân cầu. Ở giữa cầu có một con gấu rất hung ác không cho ai qua cầu hết. Người đó sẽ mất hết 5 phút để đi từ chân cầu cho đến giữa cầu và con gấu cũng chỉ ngủ có 5 phút là tỉnh dậy. Hỏi người đó làm thế nào để qua được bên kia ?
Đáp án – Đi đến giữa cầu và quay mặt ngược lại. Con gấu thức dậy tưởng người đó từ bên kia qua nên rượt trở lại. Thế là người đó đã qua dc cầu!
Ở Nước Ta, một thằng mù và ba thằng điếc đi ăn phở, mỗi người ăn một tô. Mỗi tô phở là 10 ngàn đồng. Hỏi ăn xong họ phải trả bao nhiêu tiền ?
Đáp án – Họ phải trả 20 ngàn đồng vì 1 thằng mù và ba của thằng điếc là 2 người ăn!
Giả sử ta có 1 khúc vải, cắt nó ra làm 100 khúc, thời hạn để cắt 1 khúc vải là 5 giây. Hỏi nếu cắt liên tục không ngừng nghỉ thì trong bao lâu sẽ cắt xong ? ? ?
Đáp án – 495 giây bởi vì 99 khúc (khúc cuối cùng ko phải cắt) X 5 giây = 495 giây!
Ở một xứ nọ, có luật lệ rằng : Ai muốn diện kiến nhà vua thì phải nói một câu. Nếu câu nói thật thì sẽ bị chém đầu, còn nếu là dối thì bị treo cổ. Vậy để gặp được nhà vua của xứ đó, ta phải nói như thế nào ?
Đáp án – Để gặp được nhà vui, người đó phải nói “tôi sẽ bị treo cổ!”.
Nếu như câu nói này là thật thì hắn ta sẽ bị chém đầu, nhưng nếu đem hắn ta đi chém đầu thì câu nói “ tôi sẽ bị treo cổ ” của hắn là dối, mà nếu vậy thì hắn sẽ bị treo cổ, mà nếu treo cổ hắn thì câu nói “ tôi sẽ bị treo cổ ” của hắn là thật … blah … blah .. blah … Nhờ vậy mà gã đó gặp được nhà vua trong khi vẫn bảo toàn được tính mạng con người Có 1 ông tỉ phú, ông ta trả công cho 1 tên người làm là 1 chỉ vàng / ngày. Nhưng ông này chỉ có 1 thỏi vàng gồm 7 chỉ . Hỏi : với 2 nhát cắt thì làm thế nào ông tỉ phú hoàn toàn có thể chia thỏi vàng đó ra để trả công cho tên người làm mỗi ngày đúng 1 chỉ vàng .
Đáp án – Cắt thỏi vàng 7 chỉ ra 1 khúc 1 chỉ, 1 khúc 2 chỉ và khúc còn lại là 4 chỉ.
Ngày đầu ông ta đưa người làm 1 chỉ. Ngày thứ 2 đưa 2 chỉ và người làm thối lại ông ta 1 chỉ. Ngày thứ 3 ông ta đưa ng làm 1 chỉ.
Ngày thứ 4 ông ta đưa người làm 4 chỉ, ng đó đưa lại 3 chỉ vàng cho ông nhà giàu. Ngày thứ 5, ông ta đưa 1 chỉ cho ng làm. Ngày thứ 6 ông ta đưa 2 chỉ cho ng làm, ng làm thối lại 1 chỉ cho ông ta. Ngày thứ 7 ông ta đưa chỉ vàng còn lại là hết ! Có một rổ táo, trong rổ có ba quả, làm thế nào để chia cho 3 người, mỗi người một quả mà vẫn còn một quả trong rổ ? ? ?
Đáp án – Thì đưa cho 2 người đầu mỗi người 1 quả. Còn 1 quả trong rổ đưa nguyên cả cái rổ đựng quả táo cho người còn lại thì 3 người mỗi người đều có 1 quả, và cũng có 1 quả trong rổ.!
Có một cây lê có 2 cành, mỗi cành có 2 nhánh lớn, mỗi nhánh lớn có 2 nhánh nhỏ, mỗi nhánh nhò có hai cái lá, cạnh mỗi cái lá có hai quả. Hỏi trên cây đó có mấy quả táo ? ? ?
Đáp án – Không có quả táo nào vì lê không thể ra quả táo nào trên cây được
Đố mọi người cái gì của người con gái khi nào cũng khí ẩm ?
Đáp án – Cái lưỡi
Đố mọi người chơi gì mà càng chơi càng ra nước
Đáp án – Chơi cờ
Bên trái đường có một căn nhà xanh, bên phải đường có một căn nhà đỏ. Vậy, nhà trắng ở đâu ?
Đáp án – Ở mỹ
Có 3 người tự nhận Thiên là em trai của họ, nhưng hỏi lại Thiên thì Thiên lại nói mình đâu có anh trai nào ? Theo mọi người 3 người kia ai là người nói không đúng ?
Đáp án – Không có ai nói dối cả vì 3 người đó là 3 chị gái của Thiên
Đố mọi người có cái gì mà khi bạn gọi nó không khi nào Open dù có đánh chết
Đáp án – Sự im lặng
Năm ông cùng ở một nhà Tình huynh nghĩa đệ vào ra thuận hòa Bốn ông tuổi đã lên ba Một ông đã già lại mới lên hai. Đố là cái gì?
Đáp án – 5 ngón tay
Không có quả, chẳng có cây Thế mà có hạt rụng đầy nơi nơi Cỏ cây thấy rụng thì vui Loài vật thấy rụng tìm nơi ẩn mình. Đố là gì?
Đáp án – Hạt mưa
Tui dài khoảng chừng gần gang tay, được trang điểm bởi một túm lông ở đầu. Tôi thường hoạt động giải trí trong một thiên nhiên và môi trường nóng, khí ẩm với những thớ thịt. Khi hoạt động giải trí, tôi được đẩy tới đẩy lui uyển chuyển … Khi xong việc, tôi thường để lại một lớp bọt trắng. Thường một ngày tôi hoạt động giải trí 1-3 lần, nhưng, tiếc thay, có khi tôi không được dùng tới. Tôi là cái gì ?
Đáp án – Bàn chải đánh răng
Hai tay bưng lấy khư khư Bụng thì bảo dạ rằng ư đút vào, Đút vào nó sướng làm sao Rập lên, rập xuống nó trào nước ra
Đáp án – Ăn Mía
Lòng em cay đắng quanh năm, Khi ngồi, khi đứng, khi nằm nghênh ngang. Các anh các bác trong làng, Gặp em thì lại vội vàng nâng niu. Vắng em đau khổ trăm chiều, Tuy rằng cay đắng nhưng nhiều người mê.
Đáp án – Điếu cày
Chàng thời coi thiếp là ai, Chàng buồn chàng lại đút hoài không tha. Hết buồn chàng lại rút ra, Có ngày chàng đút tới ba bốn lần. Thiếp thì nổi tiếng cù lần, Chàng cần thì đút, hết cần thì thôi. Hằng ngày hàng tháng liên hồi, Có ngày thiếp cũng quy hồi nghĩa trang.
Đáp án – Đầu video
Nâng em lên Đặt em xuống Dạng chân ra Tha hồ mà bóp
Đáp án – Vác súng và đặt súng để bắn
Bây giờ sống cũng bằng không Thôi rồi cái kiếp làm chồng, làm cha. Cho dù có sống tới già, Cho dù béo tốt cũng là công toi. Bây giờ pháo đã tịt ngòi, Gia tài còn lại.. một vòi nước trong.
Đáp án – Gà sống thiến
Thân em vừa trắng lại vừa mềm Vừa bàn tay úp Anh mà miết lên miết xuống là nó tiết nhớt ra
Đáp án – Cái bánh xà phòng.
Cục thịt đút vào lỗ thịt, Một tay sờ đít một tay sờ đầu. Đút vào một lúc lâu lâu. Rút ra cái “chách” Nhìn nhau mà cười!
Đáp án – Cho trẻ em bú.
Có một cây cầu có trọng tải là 10 tấn, có nghĩa là nếu vượt quátrọng tải trên 10 tấn thì cây cầu sẽ sập. Có một chiếc xe tải chở hàng, tổng trọng tải của xe 8 tấn + hàng 4 tấn = 12 tấn. Vậy đố những bạn làmsao bác tài qua được cây cầu này ( Không được bớt hàng ra khỏi xe ) ?
Đáp án – Bác tài cứ đi qua thôi, còn xe thì ở lại.
Có 1 con trâu. Đầu nó thì hướng về hướng mặt trời mọc, nó quay trái 2 vòng sau đó quay ngược lại sau đó lại quay phải hai vòng hỏi cái đuôi của nó chỉ hướng nào ?
Đáp án – Chỉ xuống đất.
Trận chung kết của 1 cuộc thi vắt sữa bò ( ai vắt được nhiêu thì thắng ) : người đàn bà vắt được 15 lít, người đàn ông vắt được 5 lít. Hỏi sao người đàn ông thắng ?
Đáp án – Người đàn bà vắt sữa con bò cái, còn người đàn ông vắt sữa con bò đực.
Đố mọi người có 1 cái mà lúc lên, lúc xuống nhưng nó không khi nào hoạt động hay nhúc nhích đi đâu được
Đáp án – Con đường
Đố mọi người có vật gì mà hoàn toàn có thể giúp tất cả chúng ta nhìn thẳng qua tường thuận tiện
Đáp án – Cái cửa sổ
Đố mọi người có cái gì mà khi bạn gọi nó không khi nào Open dù có đánh chết
Đáp án – Sự im lặng
Trên quốc tế có rất nhiều ngôn từ, vậy đố mọi người ngôn từ nào không phát ra âm thanh được
Đáp án – Ngôn ngữ cơ thể (body language)
Đố mọi người cây gì càng để lâu thì càng thấp ?
Đáp án – Cây nến
Đố mọi người cái gì của bạn nhưng toàn người khác dùng
Đáp án – Tên của bạn ( toàn người khác gọi )
Đố mọi người làm cách nào để không khi nào buồn ngủ khi thức đủ 7 ngày
Đáp án – Ngủ đêm
Thân em xưa ở bụi tre Mùa đông xếp lại mùa hè mở ra. Đố là cái gì?
Đáp án – Cái quạt tre, quạt giấy
Vừa bằng một thước Mà bước không qua. Đố là cái gì?
Đáp án – Cái bóng của mình
Năm ông cùng ở một nhà Tình huynh nghĩa đệ vào ra thuận hòa Bốn ông tuổi đã lên ba Một ông đã già lại mới lên hai. Đố là cái gì?
Đáp án – 5 ngón tay
Xanh xanh đỏ đỏ vàng vàng Bắc cầu thiên lý nằm ngang một mình. Đố là gì?
Đáp án – Cầu vồng
Không có quả, chẳng có cây Thế mà có hạt rụng đầy nơi nơi Cỏ cây thấy rụng thì vui Loài vật thấy rụng tìm nơi ẩn mình. Đố là gì?
Đáp án – Hạt mưa
Sáng chiều gương mặt hiền hòa Giữa trưa bộ mặt chói lòa gắt gay Đi đằng Đông, về đằng Tây Hôm nào vắng mặt trời mây tối mù. Đố là gì?
Đáp án – Mặt trời
Con gì đôi cánh mỏng tang Bay cao bay thấp báo rằng nắng mưa? Đố là con gì?
Đáp án – Con chuồn chuồn
Cày trên đồng ruộng trắng phau Khát xuống uống nước giếng sâu đen ngòm. Đố là cái gì?
Mình đang gửi bé 11 tuổi theo học tại Khách sạn Phương Đông, 97 Phan Chu Trinh, Đà Nẵng, và nhận thấy Thầy cô Tại đây dạy dỗ rất nhiệt tình, ân cần và đặc biệt rất hiểu tâm lý của trẻ em, nhất là các bé gái. Một số ưu việt mà mình cảm nhận được:
@thầy cô rất ân cần, nhiệt tình chỉ bảo từng động tác
@thị phạm và hướng dẫn ; sửa chữa để học viên hoàn thiện.
@hiểu tâm lý trẻ,
@có phương pháp sư phạm,
@và là những cựu vận động viên bơi lội nên rất yên tâm về kỹ thuật.
Vì vậy, Nếu bố mẹ còn boăn khoăn chưa biết cho con học bơi nơi nào Chất lượng hay đảm bảo thì mình xin giới thiệu một cơ sở dạy bơi Uy tín – do Cô Kim Anh trực tiếp đứng lớp.
Nếu bố mẹ có nhu cầu cho con bơi mùa hè này hãy kết nối trực tiếp với cô Kim Anh qua số điện thoại : 091 4112296
@ cô có nhận kèm 1- 1 cho các bé và người lớn
@ nhận dạy tại các quận phù hợp với khoảng cách thuận tiện của học viên.
Thông tin thêm: Hiện nay, Cô đang trực tiếp giảng dạy tại Khách sạn Phương Đông và Trường Đại học TDTT số 122 đường Hoàng Minh Thảo. Còn các địa chỉ khác trên từng quận ĐÀ Nẵng nếu có các phụ huynh muốn cho con em mình theo học tại địa chỉ gần nhà vẫn có thể đăng ký. _____________________________________________________________
* Nhóm của Cô cũng đang dạy bơi miễn phi cho các em gia đình có hoàn cảnh khó khăn tại trường Đại học Thể dục thể thao đà nẵng * Ngoài ra, Câu lạc bộ Bơi lội Hùng Anh (nơi chồng cô công tác) đang dạy các lớp cứu hộ và cấp chứng chỉ dạy bơi trên khắp toàn quốc.
Kiểm ngược : Ghi số phiếu không bầu (bị gạch tên ứng cử viên trong phiếu bầu), sau đó lấy tổng số phiếu hợp lệ trừ đi số phiếu bị gạch, thì có kết quả số phiếu bầu cho từng ứng cử viên (trong bản kiểm phiếu ô vuông có ghi rõ kiêm ngược).
– Nguyên tắc kiểm phiếu và ghi phiếu :
+ 1 người đọc, 2 người ghi độc lập vào 2 bảng kiểm phiếu ô vuông.
+ Cách ghi vào bảng kiểm phiếu ô vuông phải ghi đồng dạng (c c hoặc c c) phải ghi hết hàng trên mới đến hàng dưới, theo thứ tự cho từng ứng cử viên trong đơn vị bầu cử (thứ tự theo phiếu bầu).
– Khi kiểm phiếu xong, đối chiếu lại kết quả số phiếu cho từng ứng cử viên ở 2 bảng kiểm phiếu ô vuông, nếu không khớp cần kiểm tra lại xem sai chỗ nào ; nếu khớp nhau thì tiến hành thử kết quả : Dùng công thức : tổng số phiếu của các ứng cử viên được bầu thực tế phải nhỏ hơn hoặc bằng tổng số phiếu mà các ứng cử viên được bầu đủ, thì kiểm phiếu đúng.
* Ví dụ 1 : Đơn vị bầu cử 1, bầu 3 đại biểu, có 5 ứng cử viên. Cử tri trong danh sách 2000, cử tri đi bỏ phiếu 1900 (95,00%).
– Phân loại phiếu : Số phiếu hợp lệ 1900. Số phiếu thực tế cho các ứng cử viên (kiểm ngược) :
+ Người A : 1600 (1900-300)
+ B : 1350 (1900-550)
+ C : 1200 (1900-700)
+ D : 850 (1900-1050)
+ E : 700 (1900-1200)
Tổng cộng 5700 = 1900 x 3 = 5700 (Như vậy cuộc kiểm phiếu đã làm đúng).
* Ví dụ 2 : Đơn vị bầu cử 2, bầu 2 đại biểu, có 4 ứng cử viên. Cử tri trong danh sách 2000, cử tri đi bỏ phiếu 1900 (95,00%).
– Phân loại phiếu : Số phiếu hợp lệ 1900. Số phiếu thực tế cho các ứng cử viên (kiểm ngược) :
+ Người A : 1500 (1900-400)
+ B : 1300 (1900-600)
+ C : 550 (1900-1350)
+ D : 300 (1900-1600)
Tổng cộng 3650 < 1900 x 2 = 3800 (Như vậy cuộc kiểm phiếu đã làm đúng).
@@@@@
Riêng trường hợp 6 chọn 5, 7 chọn 6 , 4 chọn 3 v.v. Nghĩa là Bỏ (gạch) 1 ứng cử viên , thì tiến hành đếm số phiếu hợp lệ . 1/ đếm số phiếu gạch 1
2/ đếm số phiếu gạch 2
Đếm số phiếu gạch 3
vân vân
Neu tổng số phiếu gạch của tất cả ứng cử viên bằng = số phiếu gạch 1 + số phiếu gạch 2 nhân 2 + số phiếu gạch 3 x 3
nếu bằng nhau thì Là kết quả đúng , nếu lệch thì đếm lại.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Wuthering Heights
Author: Emily Brontë
Release date: December 1, 1996 [EBook #768] Most recently updated: January 18, 2022
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WUTHERING HEIGHTS ***
presuade = thuyết phục
insited = đưa vào
fatal = gây tử vong
obey = tuân theo
blame = đổ tội
grave = phần mộ
delirium = mê sảng
flee = chạy trốn
funeral = tang lễ
held captive = bị giam giữ
embrace = ôm
shepherd = chăn cừu
fondness = thật thà
anxious = lo lắng
blame = đổ tội
deppress = đè nén
sympathetic = thông cảm
hesitated = lưỡng lự
impatient = nóng nảy
patient = kiên nhẫn
suffer = chịu đựng
muttered = lẩm bẩm
upset = buồn bã
rough = thô
manner = thái độ
wore = mặc
delighted face = khuôn mặt vui mừng
annoyed = khó chịu
cruel of you = độc ác của bạn
revenge = sự trả thù
bitter = vị đắng
blame = đổ tội
greedy = tham
wickedness = gian ác
suspect = nghi ngờ
miserable = khổ sở
seashore = bờ biển
seaweed = rong biển
dump = bãi rác
mASSIVE = to lớn
SARCASM = MỈA MAI
panic = hoảng loạn
pandemic = dịch bệnh
stagnant = trì trệ
fraud = gian lận
sutf = sutf
casualy = người thường
blob = bãi
scorching = thiêu đốt
humid = ẩm ướt
muggy = nóng ẩm
blustery = = đỏng đảnh =
breezy = thoáng mát
misty = sương mù
frog = con ếch
hazy = mơ hồ
=
=
potiental = tiềm năng
threatening = đe dọa
threat = mối đe dọa
crim = tội ác
crime = tội phạm
=
raging = hoành hành
=
precipitation = sự kết tủa
they’re calling for rain = họ đang kêu mưa
they”re said it’s gping to rain = họ nói trời sắp mưa
=
brig = bắc cầu
pear = quả lê
=
desperate = tuyệt vọng
=
made a bet = đặt cược
argued = Tranh luận
banknote = giấy bạc
starve = chết đói
arguing = cãi nhau
confuse = bối rối
=
stared = nhìn chằm chằm
=
nervous = lo lắng
honest = trung thực
decision = phán quyết
nodded = gật đầu
node = nút
attractive = hấp dẫn
unattractive = không hấp dẫn
claim = khẳng định
=
curious = tò mò
curse = nguyền rủa
moor = thả neo
terified = sợ hãi
=
on the edge of the moor = trên các cạnh của đồng hoang
hound = chó săn
gigantic black dog = chó đen khổng lồ
nephew = cháu trai
crime = tội phạm
he was broad and strong = anh ấy rộng và mạnh mẽ
i have never worn them = tôi chưa bao giờ mặc chúng
there in at cab = ở đó trong xe taxi
beard = râu
whipped = quất roi
disappeared = biến mất
fortune = vận may
fortuner = vận may
=
many men will murder their best friend = nhiều người đàn ông sẽ giết người bạn thân nhất của họ
i have brought my army revolver = tôi đã mang theo khẩu súng lục ổ quay quân đội của tôi
made me shiver = làm tôi rùng mình
carriage = xe
pale = tái nhợt
=
a pale face came out of the house = một khuôn mặt nhợt nhạt bước ra khỏi nhà
=
he greeted sir Hr = anh chào anh Hr
i study nature = tôi học thiên nhiên
the wind blows tthrough on the rocks = gió thổi qua những tảng đá
=
stay on the path = ở lại trên con đường
corridor = hành lang
=
howling = rú lên
wise = khôn ngoan
horror = kinh dị
rushed = vội vã
pusned = bị trừng phạt
behaved = cư xử
her orders = mệnh lệnh của cô ấy
blame = đổ tội
wicked = độc ác
=
who was a kind master to me = ai là người thầy tốt với tôi
Titties = ngực
interested = thú vị
interesting = hấp dẫn
ferry = chiếc phà
=
scream = la hét
the man took her money = người đàn ông đã lấy tiền của cô ấy
i got you into all this = tôi đã đưa bạn vào tất cả những điều này
wise = khôn ngoan
wick = tim
bible = kinh thánh
glad = vui mừng
bitterly = cay đắng
fetch = tìm về
mistress = tình nhân
burial = Mai táng
suprising = đáng ngạc nhiên
pale = tái nhợt
treated = điều trị
poor creature = sinh vật đáng thương
i cried sharply = tôi đã khóc rất nhiều
nonesense = vớ vẩn
nonesense = vớ vẩn
wicked = độc ác
fools = đồ ngu
not so loud = không quá to
fierce = mạnh mẽ
unconscious = bất tỉnh
swearing = chửi thề
gipsy = người du mục
devil = ác quỷ
horror = kinh dị
it’s bleeding badly = nó đang chảy máu nặng
i’d bettern put a bandage = tôi nên băng bó lại
he let her run around with such a companion = anh ấy để cô ấy chạy loanh quanh với một người bạn đồng hành như vậy
cleaned her wound = làm sạch vết thương của cô ấy
behave = ứng xử
manner = thái độ
persuading = thuyết phục
appearance = vẻ bề ngoài
absense = vắng mặt
hatless = không đội mũ
bothered to wash = làm phiền để rửa
in spite of this, = bất chấp điều này,
glad = vui mừng
rushed up = lao lên
but ashaemed and proud = nhưng xấu hổ và tự hào
misrably = một cách khốn khổ
delighted = vui mừng
scolded = mắng mỏ
inherit a fortune = kế thừa một tài sản
character = tính cách
encourage = khuyến khích
desperately = tuyệt vọng
desperate = tuyệt vọng
despair = tuyệt vọng
scorn = khinh bỉ
persuaded = thuyết phục
growled = gầm gừ
revange = báo thù
he’s treated me like this = anh ấy đối xử với tôi như thế này
despair = tuyệt vọng
swore = đã thề
scold = trách mắng
behaviour = hành vi
she was proud and quick-tempered = cô ấy kiêu hãnh và nóng nảy
she led = cô ấy đã dẫn
influence = ảnh hưởng
annoyed = khó chịu
rude = bất lịch sự
amusing = vui
dull = đần độn
fondness = thật thà
but he no longer expressed his fondness for her in word = nhưng anh không còn bày tỏ tình cảm với cô ấy bằng lời nói
absent = vắng mặt
scolded = mắng mỏ
you never tell me before that you didn’t lile my company (ddoongf hanhf) = bạn chưa bao giờ nói với tôi rằng bạn không thích công ty của tôi (ddoongf hanhf)
delight = Hân hoan
pretending to dust the furniture = giả vờ phủi bụi đồ đạc
she cruelly scrached my arm = cô ấy tàn nhẫn cào vào cánh tay tôi
you lying creature = đồ dối trá
sobbling = thổn thức
shook = lắc
rushed up = lao lên
pale = tái nhợt
miserable = khổ sở
ashamed of you = Xấu hổ về bạn
hesitated = lưỡng lự
encourage = khuyến khích
call out = gọi ra
shelfish child = đứa trẻ kệch cỡm
quarrel = cuộc tranh cãi
swallow = nuốt
agressively = hung hăng
aggressively = tích cực
staring = nhìn chằm chằm
gasp in horror = há hốc mồm kinh hoàng
enemy’s son = con trai của kẻ thù
beg = ăn xin
to the devil with you = với ma quỷ với bạn
a pity = một điều đáng tiếc
muttered = lẩm bẩm
encourage = khuyến khích
he must be a fool to ask you = anh ta phải là một kẻ ngốc để hỏi bạn
seashore = bờ biển
seaweed = rong biển
dump = bãi rác
mASSIVE = to lớn
SARCASM = MỈA MAI
panic = hoảng loạn
pandemic = dịch bệnh
stagnant = trì trệ
fraud = gian lận
sutf = sutf
casualy = người thường
blob = bãi
scorching = thiêu đốt
humid = ẩm ướt
muggy = nóng ẩm
blustery = = đỏng đảnh =
breezy = thoáng mát
misty = sương mù
frog = con ếch
hazy = mơ hồ
=
=
potiental = tiềm năng
threatening = đe dọa
threat = mối đe dọa
crim = tội ác
crime = tội phạm
=
raging = hoành hành
=
precipitation = sự kết tủa
they’re calling for rain = họ đang kêu mưa
they”re said it’s gping to rain = họ nói trời sắp mưa
=
brig = bắc cầu
pear = quả lê
=
desperate = tuyệt vọng
=
made a bet = đặt cược
argued = Tranh luận
banknote = giấy bạc
starve = chết đói
arguing = cãi nhau
confuse = bối rối
=
stared = nhìn chằm chằm
=
nervous = lo lắng
honest = trung thực
decision = phán quyết
nodded = gật đầu
node = nút
attractive = hấp dẫn
unattractive = không hấp dẫn
claim = khẳng định
=
curious = tò mò
curse = nguyền rủa
moor = thả neo
terified = sợ hãi
=
on the edge of the moor = trên các cạnh của đồng hoang
hound = chó săn
gigantic black dog = chó đen khổng lồ
nephew = cháu trai
crime = tội phạm
he was broad and strong = anh ấy rộng và mạnh mẽ
i have never worn them = tôi chưa bao giờ mặc chúng
there in at cab = ở đó trong xe taxi
beard = râu
whipped = quất roi
disappeared = biến mất
fortune = vận may
fortuner = vận may
=
many men will murder their best friend = nhiều người đàn ông sẽ giết người bạn thân nhất của họ
i have brought my army revolver = tôi đã mang theo khẩu súng lục ổ quay quân đội của tôi
made me shiver = làm tôi rùng mình
carriage = xe
pale = tái nhợt
=
a pale face came out of the house = một khuôn mặt nhợt nhạt bước ra khỏi nhà
=
he greeted sir Hr = anh chào anh Hr
i study nature = tôi học thiên nhiên
the wind blows tthrough on the rocks = gió thổi qua những tảng đá
=
stay on the path = ở lại trên con đường
corridor = hành lang
=
howling = rú lên
wise = khôn ngoan
horror = kinh dị
rushed = vội vã
pusned = bị trừng phạt
behaved = cư xử
her orders = mệnh lệnh của cô ấy
blame = đổ tội
wicked = độc ác
=
who was a kind master to me = ai là người thầy tốt với tôi
Titties = ngực
interested = thú vị
interesting = hấp dẫn
ferry = chiếc phà
=
scream = la hét
the man took her money = người đàn ông đã lấy tiền của cô ấy
i got you into all this = tôi đã đưa bạn vào tất cả những điều này
wise = khôn ngoan
wick = tim
bible = kinh thánh
glad = vui mừng
bitterly = cay đắng
fetch = tìm về
mistress = tình nhân
burial = Mai táng
suprising = đáng ngạc nhiên
pale = tái nhợt
treated = điều trị
poor creature = sinh vật đáng thương
i cried sharply = tôi đã khóc rất nhiều
nonesense = vớ vẩn
=
=
violent = hung bạo
a pleasant companion = một người bạn đồng hành dễ chịu
dull = đần độn
frightened = sợ sệt
rushed outside = lao ra ngoài
chimey = ống khói
howling = rú lên
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
CHAPTER I
1801—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist’s Heaven—and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name.
“Mr. Heathcliff?” I said.
A nod was the answer.
“Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant, sir. I do myself the honour of calling as soon as possible after my arrival, to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by my perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange: I heard yesterday you had had some thoughts—”
“Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir,” he interrupted, wincing. “I should not allow any one to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it—walk in!”
The “walk in” was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, “Go to the Deuce!” even the gate over which he leant manifested no sympathising movement to the words; and I think that circumstance determined me to accept the invitation: I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself.
When he saw my horse’s breast fairly pushing the barrier, he did put out his hand to unchain it, and then sullenly preceded me up the causeway, calling, as we entered the court,—“Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood’s horse; and bring up some wine.”
“Here we have the whole establishment of domestics, I suppose,” was the reflection suggested by this compound order. “No wonder the grass grows up between the flags, and cattle are the only hedge-cutters.”
Joseph was an elderly, nay, an old man, very old, perhaps, though hale and sinewy. “The Lord help us!” he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse: looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no reference to my unexpected advent.
Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling. “Wuthering” being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones.
Before passing the threshold, I paused to admire a quantity of grotesque carving lavished over the front, and especially about the principal door; above which, among a wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys, I detected the date “1500,” and the name “Hareton Earnshaw.” I would have made a few comments, and requested a short history of the place from the surly owner; but his attitude at the door appeared to demand my speedy entrance, or complete departure, and I had no desire to aggravate his impatience previous to inspecting the penetralium.
One step brought us into the family sitting-room, without any introductory lobby or passage: they call it here “the house” pre-eminently. It includes kitchen and parlour, generally; but I believe at Wuthering Heights the kitchen is forced to retreat altogether into another quarter: at least I distinguished a chatter of tongues, and a clatter of culinary utensils, deep within; and I observed no signs of roasting, boiling, or baking, about the huge fireplace; nor any glitter of copper saucepans and tin cullenders on the walls. One end, indeed, reflected splendidly both light and heat from ranks of immense pewter dishes, interspersed with silver jugs and tankards, towering row after row, on a vast oak dresser, to the very roof. The latter had never been under-drawn: its entire anatomy lay bare to an inquiring eye, except where a frame of wood laden with oatcakes and clusters of legs of beef, mutton, and ham, concealed it. Above the chimney were sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols: and, by way of ornament, three gaudily painted canisters disposed along its ledge. The floor was of smooth, white stone; the chairs, high-backed, primitive structures, painted green: one or two heavy black ones lurking in the shade. In an arch under the dresser reposed a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer, surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies; and other dogs haunted other recesses.
The apartment and furniture would have been nothing extraordinary as belonging to a homely, northern farmer, with a stubborn countenance, and stalwart limbs set out to advantage in knee-breeches and gaiters. Such an individual seated in his arm-chair, his mug of ale frothing on the round table before him, is to be seen in any circuit of five or six miles among these hills, if you go at the right time after dinner. But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose. Possibly, some people might suspect him of a degree of under-bred pride; I have a sympathetic chord within that tells me it is nothing of the sort: I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling—to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He’ll love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again. No, I’m running on too fast: I bestow my own attributes over-liberally on him. Mr. Heathcliff may have entirely dissimilar reasons for keeping his hand out of the way when he meets a would-be acquaintance, to those which actuate me. Let me hope my constitution is almost peculiar: my dear mother used to say I should never have a comfortable home; and only last summer I proved myself perfectly unworthy of one.
While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I “never told my love” vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return—the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame—shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp.
By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.
I took a seat at the end of the hearthstone opposite that towards which my landlord advanced, and filled up an interval of silence by attempting to caress the canine mother, who had left her nursery, and was sneaking wolfishly to the back of my legs, her lip curled up, and her white teeth watering for a snatch. My caress provoked a long, guttural gnarl.
“You’d better let the dog alone,” growled Mr. Heathcliff in unison, checking fiercer demonstrations with a punch of his foot. “She’s not accustomed to be spoiled—not kept for a pet.” Then, striding to a side door, he shouted again, “Joseph!”
Joseph mumbled indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, but gave no intimation of ascending; so his master dived down to him, leaving me vis-à-vis the ruffianly bitch and a pair of grim shaggy sheep-dogs, who shared with her a jealous guardianship over all my movements. Not anxious to come in contact with their fangs, I sat still; but, imagining they would scarcely understand tacit insults, I unfortunately indulged in winking and making faces at the trio, and some turn of my physiognomy so irritated madam, that she suddenly broke into a fury and leapt on my knees. I flung her back, and hastened to interpose the table between us. This proceeding aroused the whole hive: half-a-dozen four-footed fiends, of various sizes and ages, issued from hidden dens to the common centre. I felt my heels and coat-laps peculiar subjects of assault; and parrying off the larger combatants as effectually as I could with the poker, I was constrained to demand, aloud, assistance from some of the household in re-establishing peace.
Mr. Heathcliff and his man climbed the cellar steps with vexatious phlegm: I don’t think they moved one second faster than usual, though the hearth was an absolute tempest of worrying and yelping. Happily, an inhabitant of the kitchen made more dispatch; a lusty dame, with tucked-up gown, bare arms, and fire-flushed cheeks, rushed into the midst of us flourishing a frying-pan: and used that weapon, and her tongue, to such purpose, that the storm subsided magically, and she only remained, heaving like a sea after a high wind, when her master entered on the scene.
“What the devil is the matter?” he asked, eyeing me in a manner that I could ill endure after this inhospitable treatment.
“What the devil, indeed!” I muttered. “The herd of possessed swine could have had no worse spirits in them than those animals of yours, sir. You might as well leave a stranger with a brood of tigers!”
“They won’t meddle with persons who touch nothing,” he remarked, putting the bottle before me, and restoring the displaced table. “The dogs do right to be vigilant. Take a glass of wine?”
“No, thank you.”
“Not bitten, are you?”
“If I had been, I would have set my signet on the biter.” Heathcliff’s countenance relaxed into a grin.
“Come, come,” he said, “you are flurried, Mr. Lockwood. Here, take a little wine. Guests are so exceedingly rare in this house that I and my dogs, I am willing to own, hardly know how to receive them. Your health, sir?”
I bowed and returned the pledge; beginning to perceive that it would be foolish to sit sulking for the misbehaviour of a pack of curs; besides, I felt loth to yield the fellow further amusement at my expense; since his humour took that turn. He—probably swayed by prudential consideration of the folly of offending a good tenant—relaxed a little in the laconic style of chipping off his pronouns and auxiliary verbs, and introduced what he supposed would be a subject of interest to me,—a discourse on the advantages and disadvantages of my present place of retirement. I found him very intelligent on the topics we touched; and before I went home, I was encouraged so far as to volunteer another visit to-morrow. He evidently wished no repetition of my intrusion. I shall go, notwithstanding. It is astonishing how sociable I feel myself compared with him.
CHAPTER II
Yesterday afternoon set in misty and cold. I had half a mind to spend it by my study fire, instead of wading through heath and mud to Wuthering Heights. On coming up from dinner, however, (N.B.—I dine between twelve and one o’clock; the housekeeper, a matronly lady, taken as a fixture along with the house, could not, or would not, comprehend my request that I might be served at five)—on mounting the stairs with this lazy intention, and stepping into the room, I saw a servant-girl on her knees surrounded by brushes and coal-scuttles, and raising an infernal dust as she extinguished the flames with heaps of cinders. This spectacle drove me back immediately; I took my hat, and, after a four-miles’ walk, arrived at Heathcliff’s garden-gate just in time to escape the first feathery flakes of a snow shower.
On that bleak hill top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. Being unable to remove the chain, I jumped over, and, running up the flagged causeway bordered with straggling gooseberry-bushes, knocked vainly for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled.
“Wretched inmates!” I ejaculated, mentally, “you deserve perpetual isolation from your species for your churlish inhospitality. At least, I would not keep my doors barred in the day-time. I don’t care—I will get in!” So resolved, I grasped the latch and shook it vehemently. Vinegar-faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn.
“What are ye for?” he shouted. “T’ maister’s down i’ t’ fowld. Go round by th’ end o’ t’ laith, if ye went to spake to him.”
“Is there nobody inside to open the door?” I hallooed, responsively.
“There’s nobbut t’ missis; and shoo’ll not oppen ’t an ye mak’ yer flaysome dins till neeght.”
“Why? Cannot you tell her whom I am, eh, Joseph?”
“Nor-ne me! I’ll hae no hend wi’t,” muttered the head, vanishing.
The snow began to drive thickly. I seized the handle to essay another trial; when a young man without coat, and shouldering a pitchfork, appeared in the yard behind. He hailed me to follow him, and, after marching through a wash-house, and a paved area containing a coal-shed, pump, and pigeon-cot, we at length arrived in the huge, warm, cheerful apartment where I was formerly received. It glowed delightfully in the radiance of an immense fire, compounded of coal, peat, and wood; and near the table, laid for a plentiful evening meal, I was pleased to observe the “missis,” an individual whose existence I had never previously suspected. I bowed and waited, thinking she would bid me take a seat. She looked at me, leaning back in her chair, and remained motionless and mute.
“Rough weather!” I remarked. “I’m afraid, Mrs. Heathcliff, the door must bear the consequence of your servants’ leisure attendance: I had hard work to make them hear me.”
She never opened her mouth. I stared—she stared also: at any rate, she kept her eyes on me in a cool, regardless manner, exceedingly embarrassing and disagreeable.
“Sit down,” said the young man, gruffly. “He’ll be in soon.”
I obeyed; and hemmed, and called the villain Juno, who deigned, at this second interview, to move the extreme tip of her tail, in token of owning my acquaintance.
“A beautiful animal!” I commenced again. “Do you intend parting with the little ones, madam?”
“They are not mine,” said the amiable hostess, more repellingly than Heathcliff himself could have replied.
“Ah, your favourites are among these?” I continued, turning to an obscure cushion full of something like cats.
“A strange choice of favourites!” she observed scornfully.
Unluckily, it was a heap of dead rabbits. I hemmed once more, and drew closer to the hearth, repeating my comment on the wildness of the evening.
“You should not have come out,” she said, rising and reaching from the chimney-piece two of the painted canisters.
Her position before was sheltered from the light; now, I had a distinct view of her whole figure and countenance. She was slender, and apparently scarcely past girlhood: an admirable form, and the most exquisite little face that I have ever had the pleasure of beholding; small features, very fair; flaxen ringlets, or rather golden, hanging loose on her delicate neck; and eyes, had they been agreeable in expression, that would have been irresistible: fortunately for my susceptible heart, the only sentiment they evinced hovered between scorn and a kind of desperation, singularly unnatural to be detected there. The canisters were almost out of her reach; I made a motion to aid her; she turned upon me as a miser might turn if any one attempted to assist him in counting his gold.
“I don’t want your help,” she snapped; “I can get them for myself.”
“I beg your pardon!” I hastened to reply.
“Were you asked to tea?” she demanded, tying an apron over her neat black frock, and standing with a spoonful of the leaf poised over the pot.
“I shall be glad to have a cup,” I answered.
“Were you asked?” she repeated.
“No,” I said, half smiling. “You are the proper person to ask me.”
She flung the tea back, spoon and all, and resumed her chair in a pet; her forehead corrugated, and her red under-lip pushed out, like a child’s ready to cry.
Meanwhile, the young man had slung on to his person a decidedly shabby upper garment, and, erecting himself before the blaze, looked down on me from the corner of his eyes, for all the world as if there were some mortal feud unavenged between us. I began to doubt whether he were a servant or not: his dress and speech were both rude, entirely devoid of the superiority observable in Mr. and Mrs. Heathcliff; his thick brown curls were rough and uncultivated, his whiskers encroached bearishly over his cheeks, and his hands were embrowned like those of a common labourer: still his bearing was free, almost haughty, and he showed none of a domestic’s assiduity in attending on the lady of the house. In the absence of clear proofs of his condition, I deemed it best to abstain from noticing his curious conduct; and, five minutes afterwards, the entrance of Heathcliff relieved me, in some measure, from my uncomfortable state.
“You see, sir, I am come, according to promise!” I exclaimed, assuming the cheerful; “and I fear I shall be weather-bound for half an hour, if you can afford me shelter during that space.”
“Half an hour?” he said, shaking the white flakes from his clothes; “I wonder you should select the thick of a snow-storm to ramble about in. Do you know that you run a risk of being lost in the marshes? People familiar with these moors often miss their road on such evenings; and I can tell you there is no chance of a change at present.”
“Perhaps I can get a guide among your lads, and he might stay at the Grange till morning—could you spare me one?”
“No, I could not.”
“Oh, indeed! Well, then, I must trust to my own sagacity.”
“Umph!”
“Are you going to mak’ the tea?” demanded he of the shabby coat, shifting his ferocious gaze from me to the young lady.
“Is he to have any?” she asked, appealing to Heathcliff.
“Get it ready, will you?” was the answer, uttered so savagely that I started. The tone in which the words were said revealed a genuine bad nature. I no longer felt inclined to call Heathcliff a capital fellow. When the preparations were finished, he invited me with—“Now, sir, bring forward your chair.” And we all, including the rustic youth, drew round the table: an austere silence prevailing while we discussed our meal.
I thought, if I had caused the cloud, it was my duty to make an effort to dispel it. They could not every day sit so grim and taciturn; and it was impossible, however ill-tempered they might be, that the universal scowl they wore was their every-day countenance.
“It is strange,” I began, in the interval of swallowing one cup of tea and receiving another—“it is strange how custom can mould our tastes and ideas: many could not imagine the existence of happiness in a life of such complete exile from the world as you spend, Mr. Heathcliff; yet, I’ll venture to say, that, surrounded by your family, and with your amiable lady as the presiding genius over your home and heart—”
“My amiable lady!” he interrupted, with an almost diabolical sneer on his face. “Where is she—my amiable lady?”
“Mrs. Heathcliff, your wife, I mean.”
“Well, yes—oh, you would intimate that her spirit has taken the post of ministering angel, and guards the fortunes of Wuthering Heights, even when her body is gone. Is that it?”
Perceiving myself in a blunder, I attempted to correct it. I might have seen there was too great a disparity between the ages of the parties to make it likely that they were man and wife. One was about forty: a period of mental vigour at which men seldom cherish the delusion of being married for love by girls: that dream is reserved for the solace of our declining years. The other did not look seventeen.
Then it flashed upon me—“The clown at my elbow, who is drinking his tea out of a basin and eating his bread with unwashed hands, may be her husband: Heathcliff junior, of course. Here is the consequence of being buried alive: she has thrown herself away upon that boor from sheer ignorance that better individuals existed! A sad pity—I must beware how I cause her to regret her choice.” The last reflection may seem conceited; it was not. My neighbour struck me as bordering on repulsive; I knew, through experience, that I was tolerably attractive.
“Mrs. Heathcliff is my daughter-in-law,” said Heathcliff, corroborating my surmise. He turned, as he spoke, a peculiar look in her direction: a look of hatred; unless he has a most perverse set of facial muscles that will not, like those of other people, interpret the language of his soul.
“Ah, certainly—I see now: you are the favoured possessor of the beneficent fairy,” I remarked, turning to my neighbour.
This was worse than before: the youth grew crimson, and clenched his fist, with every appearance of a meditated assault. But he seemed to recollect himself presently, and smothered the storm in a brutal curse, muttered on my behalf: which, however, I took care not to notice.
“Unhappy in your conjectures, sir,” observed my host; “we neither of us have the privilege of owning your good fairy; her mate is dead. I said she was my daughter-in-law: therefore, she must have married my son.”
“And this young man is—”
“Not my son, assuredly.”
Heathcliff smiled again, as if it were rather too bold a jest to attribute the paternity of that bear to him.
“My name is Hareton Earnshaw,” growled the other; “and I’d counsel you to respect it!”
“I’ve shown no disrespect,” was my reply, laughing internally at the dignity with which he announced himself.
He fixed his eye on me longer than I cared to return the stare, for fear I might be tempted either to box his ears or render my hilarity audible. I began to feel unmistakably out of place in that pleasant family circle. The dismal spiritual atmosphere overcame, and more than neutralised, the glowing physical comforts round me; and I resolved to be cautious how I ventured under those rafters a third time.
The business of eating being concluded, and no one uttering a word of sociable conversation, I approached a window to examine the weather. A sorrowful sight I saw: dark night coming down prematurely, and sky and hills mingled in one bitter whirl of wind and suffocating snow.
“I don’t think it possible for me to get home now without a guide,” I could not help exclaiming. “The roads will be buried already; and, if they were bare, I could scarcely distinguish a foot in advance.”
“Hareton, drive those dozen sheep into the barn porch. They’ll be covered if left in the fold all night: and put a plank before them,” said Heathcliff.
“How must I do?” I continued, with rising irritation.
There was no reply to my question; and on looking round I saw only Joseph bringing in a pail of porridge for the dogs, and Mrs. Heathcliff leaning over the fire, diverting herself with burning a bundle of matches which had fallen from the chimney-piece as she restored the tea-canister to its place. The former, when he had deposited his burden, took a critical survey of the room, and in cracked tones grated out—“Aw wonder how yah can faishion to stand thear i’ idleness un war, when all on ’ems goan out! Bud yah’re a nowt, and it’s no use talking—yah’ll niver mend o’yer ill ways, but goa raight to t’ divil, like yer mother afore ye!”
I imagined, for a moment, that this piece of eloquence was addressed to me; and, sufficiently enraged, stepped towards the aged rascal with an intention of kicking him out of the door. Mrs. Heathcliff, however, checked me by her answer.
“You scandalous old hypocrite!” she replied. “Are you not afraid of being carried away bodily, whenever you mention the devil’s name? I warn you to refrain from provoking me, or I’ll ask your abduction as a special favour! Stop! look here, Joseph,” she continued, taking a long, dark book from a shelf; “I’ll show you how far I’ve progressed in the Black Art: I shall soon be competent to make a clear house of it. The red cow didn’t die by chance; and your rheumatism can hardly be reckoned among providential visitations!”
“Oh, wicked, wicked!” gasped the elder; “may the Lord deliver us from evil!”
“No, reprobate! you are a castaway—be off, or I’ll hurt you seriously! I’ll have you all modelled in wax and clay! and the first who passes the limits I fix shall—I’ll not say what he shall be done to—but, you’ll see! Go, I’m looking at you!”
The little witch put a mock malignity into her beautiful eyes, and Joseph, trembling with sincere horror, hurried out, praying, and ejaculating “wicked” as he went. I thought her conduct must be prompted by a species of dreary fun; and, now that we were alone, I endeavoured to interest her in my distress.
“Mrs. Heathcliff,” I said earnestly, “you must excuse me for troubling you. I presume, because, with that face, I’m sure you cannot help being good-hearted. Do point out some landmarks by which I may know my way home: I have no more idea how to get there than you would have how to get to London!”
“Take the road you came,” she answered, ensconcing herself in a chair, with a candle, and the long book open before her. “It is brief advice, but as sound as I can give.”
“Then, if you hear of me being discovered dead in a bog or a pit full of snow, your conscience won’t whisper that it is partly your fault?”
“How so? I cannot escort you. They wouldn’t let me go to the end of the garden wall.”
“You! I should be sorry to ask you to cross the threshold, for my convenience, on such a night,” I cried. “I want you to tell me my way, not to show it: or else to persuade Mr. Heathcliff to give me a guide.”
“Who? There is himself, Earnshaw, Zillah, Joseph and I. Which would you have?”
“Are there no boys at the farm?”
“No; those are all.”
“Then, it follows that I am compelled to stay.”
“That you may settle with your host. I have nothing to do with it.”
“I hope it will be a lesson to you to make no more rash journeys on these hills,” cried Heathcliff’s stern voice from the kitchen entrance. “As to staying here, I don’t keep accommodations for visitors: you must share a bed with Hareton or Joseph, if you do.”
“I can sleep on a chair in this room,” I replied.
“No, no! A stranger is a stranger, be he rich or poor: it will not suit me to permit any one the range of the place while I am off guard!” said the unmannerly wretch.
With this insult my patience was at an end. I uttered an expression of disgust, and pushed past him into the yard, running against Earnshaw in my haste. It was so dark that I could not see the means of exit; and, as I wandered round, I heard another specimen of their civil behaviour amongst each other. At first the young man appeared about to befriend me.
“I’ll go with him as far as the park,” he said.
“You’ll go with him to hell!” exclaimed his master, or whatever relation he bore. “And who is to look after the horses, eh?”
“A man’s life is of more consequence than one evening’s neglect of the horses: somebody must go,” murmured Mrs. Heathcliff, more kindly than I expected.
“Not at your command!” retorted Hareton. “If you set store on him, you’d better be quiet.”
“Then I hope his ghost will haunt you; and I hope Mr. Heathcliff will never get another tenant till the Grange is a ruin,” she answered, sharply.
“Hearken, hearken, shoo’s cursing on ’em!” muttered Joseph, towards whom I had been steering.
He sat within earshot, milking the cows by the light of a lantern, which I seized unceremoniously, and, calling out that I would send it back on the morrow, rushed to the nearest postern.
On opening the little door, two hairy monsters flew at my throat, bearing me down, and extinguishing the light; while a mingled guffaw from Heathcliff and Hareton put the copestone on my rage and humiliation. Fortunately, the beasts seemed more bent on stretching their paws, and yawning, and flourishing their tails, than devouring me alive; but they would suffer no resurrection, and I was forced to lie till their malignant masters pleased to deliver me: then, hatless and trembling with wrath, I ordered the miscreants to let me out—on their peril to keep me one minute longer—with several incoherent threats of retaliation that, in their indefinite depth of virulency, smacked of King Lear.
The vehemence of my agitation brought on a copious bleeding at the nose, and still Heathcliff laughed, and still I scolded. I don’t know what would have concluded the scene, had there not been one person at hand rather more rational than myself, and more benevolent than my entertainer. This was Zillah, the stout housewife; who at length issued forth to inquire into the nature of the uproar. She thought that some of them had been laying violent hands on me; and, not daring to attack her master, she turned her vocal artillery against the younger scoundrel.
“Well, Mr. Earnshaw,” she cried, “I wonder what you’ll have agait next? Are we going to murder folk on our very door-stones? I see this house will never do for me—look at t’ poor lad, he’s fair choking! Wisht, wisht; you mun’n’t go on so. Come in, and I’ll cure that: there now, hold ye still.”
With these words she suddenly splashed a pint of icy water down my neck, and pulled me into the kitchen. Mr. Heathcliff followed, his accidental merriment expiring quickly in his habitual moroseness.
I was sick exceedingly, and dizzy, and faint; and thus compelled perforce to accept lodgings under his roof. He told Zillah to give me a glass of brandy, and then passed on to the inner room; while she condoled with me on my sorry predicament, and having obeyed his orders, whereby I was somewhat revived, ushered me to bed.
CHAPTER III
While leading the way upstairs, she recommended that I should hide the candle, and not make a noise; for her master had an odd notion about the chamber she would put me in, and never let anybody lodge there willingly. I asked the reason. She did not know, she answered: she had only lived there a year or two; and they had so many queer goings on, she could not begin to be curious.
Too stupefied to be curious myself, I fastened my door and glanced round for the bed. The whole furniture consisted of a chair, a clothes-press, and a large oak case, with squares cut out near the top resembling coach windows. Having approached this structure, I looked inside, and perceived it to be a singular sort of old-fashioned couch, very conveniently designed to obviate the necessity for every member of the family having a room to himself. In fact, it formed a little closet, and the ledge of a window, which it enclosed, served as a table.
I slid back the panelled sides, got in with my light, pulled them together again, and felt secure against the vigilance of Heathcliff, and every one else.
The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled up in one corner; and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small—Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton.
In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and continued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw—Heathcliff—Linton, till my eyes closed; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started from the dark, as vivid as spectres—the air swarmed with Catherines; and rousing myself to dispel the obtrusive name, I discovered my candle-wick reclining on one of the antique volumes, and perfuming the place with an odour of roasted calf-skin.
I snuffed it off, and, very ill at ease under the influence of cold and lingering nausea, sat up and spread open the injured tome on my knee. It was a Testament, in lean type, and smelling dreadfully musty: a fly-leaf bore the inscription—“Catherine Earnshaw, her book,” and a date some quarter of a century back.
I shut it, and took up another and another, till I had examined all. Catherine’s library was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it to have been well used, though not altogether for a legitimate purpose: scarcely one chapter had escaped a pen-and-ink commentary—at least the appearance of one—covering every morsel of blank that the printer had left. Some were detached sentences; other parts took the form of a regular diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand. At the top of an extra page (quite a treasure, probably, when first lighted on) I was greatly amused to behold an excellent caricature of my friend Joseph,—rudely, yet powerfully sketched. An immediate interest kindled within me for the unknown Catherine, and I began forthwith to decipher her faded hieroglyphics.
“An awful Sunday,” commenced the paragraph beneath. “I wish my father were back again. Hindley is a detestable substitute—his conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious—H. and I are going to rebel—we took our initiatory step this evening.
“All day had been flooding with rain; we could not go to church, so Joseph must needs get up a congregation in the garret; and, while Hindley and his wife basked downstairs before a comfortable fire—doing anything but reading their Bibles, I’ll answer for it—Heathcliff, myself, and the unhappy ploughboy were commanded to take our prayer-books, and mount: we were ranged in a row, on a sack of corn, groaning and shivering, and hoping that Joseph would shiver too, so that he might give us a short homily for his own sake. A vain idea! The service lasted precisely three hours; and yet my brother had the face to exclaim, when he saw us descending, ‘What, done already?’ On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners.
“‘You forget you have a master here,’ says the tyrant. ‘I’ll demolish the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. Oh, boy! was that you? Frances darling, pull his hair as you go by: I heard him snap his fingers.’ Frances pulled his hair heartily, and then went and seated herself on her husband’s knee, and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour—foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of. We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph, on an errand from the stables. He tears down my handiwork, boxes my ears, and croaks:
“‘T’ maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath not o’ered, und t’ sound o’ t’ gospel still i’ yer lugs, and ye darr be laiking! Shame on ye! sit ye down, ill childer! there’s good books eneugh if ye’ll read ’em: sit ye down, and think o’ yer sowls!’
“Saying this, he compelled us so to square our positions that we might receive from the far-off fire a dull ray to show us the text of the lumber he thrust upon us. I could not bear the employment. I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book. Heathcliff kicked his to the same place. Then there was a hubbub!
“‘Maister Hindley!’ shouted our chaplain. ‘Maister, coom hither! Miss Cathy’s riven th’ back off “Th’ Helmet o’ Salvation,” un’ Heathcliff’s pawsed his fit into t’ first part o’ “T’ Brooad Way to Destruction!” It’s fair flaysome that ye let ’em go on this gait. Ech! th’ owd man wad ha’ laced ’em properly—but he’s goan!’
“Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into the back-kitchen; where, Joseph asseverated, ‘owd Nick’ would fetch us as sure as we were living: and, so comforted, we each sought a separate nook to await his advent. I reached this book, and a pot of ink from a shelf, and pushed the house-door ajar to give me light, and I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient, and proposes that we should appropriate the dairywoman’s cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter. A pleasant suggestion—and then, if the surly old man come in, he may believe his prophecy verified—we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here.”
* * * * * *
I suppose Catherine fulfilled her project, for the next sentence took up another subject: she waxed lachrymose.
“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 any more; and, he says, he and I must not play together, and 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 swears he will reduce him to his right place—”
* * * * * *
I began to nod drowsily over the dim page: my eye wandered from manuscript to print. I saw a red ornamented title—“Seventy Times Seven, and the First of the Seventy-First. A Pious Discourse delivered by the Reverend Jabez Branderham, in the Chapel of Gimmerden Sough.” And while I was, half-consciously, worrying my brain to guess what Jabez Branderham would make of his subject, I sank back in bed, and fell asleep. Alas, for the effects of bad tea and bad temper! What else could it be that made me pass such a terrible night? I don’t remember another that I can at all compare with it since I was capable of suffering.
I began to dream, almost before I ceased to be sensible of my locality. I thought it was morning; and I had set out on my way home, with Joseph for a guide. The snow lay yards deep in our road; and, as we floundered on, my companion wearied me with constant reproaches that I had not brought a pilgrim’s staff: telling me that I could never get into the house without one, and boastfully flourishing a heavy-headed cudgel, which I understood to be so denominated. For a moment I considered it absurd that I should need such a weapon to gain admittance into my own residence. Then a new idea flashed across me. I was not going there: we were journeying to hear the famous Jabez Branderham preach, from the text—“Seventy Times Seven;” and either Joseph, the preacher, or I had committed the “First of the Seventy-First,” and were to be publicly exposed and excommunicated.
We came to the chapel. I have passed it really in my walks, twice or thrice; it lies in a hollow, between two hills: an elevated hollow, near a swamp, whose peaty moisture is said to answer all the purposes of embalming on the few corpses deposited there. The roof has been kept whole hitherto; but as the clergyman’s stipend is only twenty pounds per annum, and a house with two rooms, threatening speedily to determine into one, no clergyman will undertake the duties of pastor: especially as it is currently reported that his flock would rather let him starve than increase the living by one penny from their own pockets. However, in my dream, Jabez had a full and attentive congregation; and he preached—good God! what a sermon; divided into four hundred and ninety parts, each fully equal to an ordinary address from the pulpit, and each discussing a separate sin! Where he searched for them, I cannot tell. He had his private manner of interpreting the phrase, and it seemed necessary the brother should sin different sins on every occasion. They were of the most curious character: odd transgressions that I never imagined previously.
Oh, how weary I grew. How I writhed, and yawned, and nodded, and revived! How I pinched and pricked myself, and rubbed my eyes, and stood up, and sat down again, and nudged Joseph to inform me if he would ever have done. I was condemned to hear all out: finally, he reached the “First of the Seventy-First.” At that crisis, a sudden inspiration descended on me; I was moved to rise and denounce Jabez Branderham as the sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon.
“Sir,” I exclaimed, “sitting here within these four walls, at one stretch, I have endured and forgiven the four hundred and ninety heads of your discourse. Seventy times seven times have I plucked up my hat and been about to depart—Seventy times seven times have you preposterously forced me to resume my seat. The four hundred and ninety-first is too much. Fellow-martyrs, have at him! Drag him down, and crush him to atoms, that the place which knows him may know him no more!”
“Thou art the Man!” cried Jabez, after a solemn pause, leaning over his cushion. “Seventy times seven times didst thou gapingly contort thy visage—seventy times seven did I take counsel with my soul—Lo, this is human weakness: this also may be absolved! The First of the Seventy-First is come. Brethren, execute upon him the judgment written. Such honour have all His saints!”
With that concluding word, the whole assembly, exalting their pilgrim’s staves, rushed round me in a body; and I, having no weapon to raise in self-defence, commenced grappling with Joseph, my nearest and most ferocious assailant, for his. In the confluence of the multitude, several clubs crossed; blows, aimed at me, fell on other sconces. Presently the whole chapel resounded with rappings and counter rappings: every man’s hand was against his neighbour; and Branderham, unwilling to remain idle, poured forth his zeal in a shower of loud taps on the boards of the pulpit, which responded so smartly that, at last, to my unspeakable relief, they woke me. And what was it that had suggested the tremendous tumult? What had played Jabez’s part in the row? Merely the branch of a fir-tree that touched my lattice as the blast wailed by, and rattled its dry cones against the panes! I listened doubtingly an instant; detected the disturber, then turned and dozed, and dreamt again: if possible, still more disagreeably than before.
This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavoured 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 importunate 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, meanwhile, to disengage myself.
“Catherine Linton,” it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton)—“I’m come home: I’d lost my way on the moor!”
As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to 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 gripe, almost maddening me with fear.
“How can I!” I said at length. “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 waif for twenty years!”
Thereat began a feeble scratching outside, and the pile of books moved as if thrust forward.
I tried to jump up; but could not stir a limb; and so 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 glimmered through the squares at the top of the bed. I sat shuddering, yet, 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 any one here?”
I considered it best to confess my presence; for I knew Heathcliff’s accents, and feared he might search further, if I kept quiet.
With this intention, I turned and opened the panels. 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 leaped 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 called out, desirous to spare him the humiliation of exposing his cowardice further. “I had the misfortune to scream in my sleep, owing to a frightful nightmare. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
“Oh, God confound you, Mr. Lockwood! I wish you were at the—” commenced my host, setting the candle on a chair, because he found it impossible to hold it steady. “And who showed you up into this room?” he continued, crushing his nails into his palms, and grinding his teeth to subdue the maxillary convulsions. “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 on to the floor, and rapidly resuming my garments. “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. No one will thank you for a doze in such a den!”
“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 throat cut!”
“If the little fiend had got in at the window, she probably would have strangled me!” I returned. “I’m not going to endure the persecutions of your hospitable ancestors again. Was not the Reverend Jabez Branderham akin to you on the mother’s side? And that minx, Catherine Linton, or Earnshaw, or however she was called—she must have been a changeling—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, till thus awakened. I blushed at my inconsideration: but, without showing further consciousness of the offence, I hastened to add—“The truth is, sir, I passed the first part of the night in—” Here I stopped afresh—I was about to say “perusing those old volumes,” then it would have revealed my knowledge of their written, as well as their printed, contents; so, correcting myself, I went on—“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 in this way to me!” thundered Heathcliff with savage vehemence. “How—how dare you, under my roof?—God! he’s mad to speak so!” 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 took pity and proceeded with my dreams; affirming I had never heard the appellation of “Catherine Linton” before, but reading it often over produced an impression which personified itself when I had no longer my imagination under control. 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 liking to show him that I had heard the conflict, I continued my toilette rather noisily, looked at my watch, and soliloquised on the length of the night: “Not three o’clock yet! 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 winter, and rise at four,” said my host, suppressing a groan: and, as I fancied, by the motion of his arm’s shadow, dashing a tear from his eyes. “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 yard till daylight, and then I’ll be off; and you need not dread a repetition of my intrusion. I’m now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”
“Delightful company!” muttered Heathcliff. “Take the candle, and go where you please. I shall join you directly. Keep out of the yard, though, the dogs are unchained; and the house—Juno mounts sentinel there, and—nay, you can only ramble about the steps and passages. But, away with you! I’ll come in two minutes!”
I obeyed, so far as to quit the chamber; when, ignorant where the narrow lobbies led, I stood still, and was witness, involuntarily, to a piece of superstition on the part of my landlord which belied, oddly, his apparent sense. He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears. “Come in! come in!” he sobbed. “Cathy, do come. Oh, do—once more! Oh! my heart’s darling! hear me this time, Catherine, at last!” The spectre showed a spectre’s ordinary caprice: it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the light.
There was such anguish in the gush of grief that accompanied this raving, that my compassion made me overlook its folly, and I drew off, half angry to have listened at all, and vexed at having related my ridiculous nightmare, since it produced that agony; though why was beyond my comprehension. I descended cautiously to the lower regions, and landed in the back-kitchen, where a gleam of fire, raked compactly together, enabled me to rekindle my candle. Nothing was stirring except a brindled, grey cat, which crept from the ashes, and saluted me with a querulous mew.
Two benches, shaped in sections of a circle, nearly enclosed the hearth; on one of these I stretched myself, and Grimalkin mounted the other. We were both of us nodding ere any one invaded our retreat, and then it was Joseph, shuffling down a wooden ladder that vanished in the roof, through a trap: the ascent to his garret, I suppose. He cast a sinister look at the little flame which I had enticed to play between the ribs, swept the cat from its elevation, and bestowing himself in the vacancy, commenced the operation of stuffing a three-inch pipe with tobacco. My presence in his sanctum was evidently esteemed a piece of impudence too shameful for remark: he silently applied the tube to his lips, folded his arms, and puffed away. I let him enjoy the luxury unannoyed; and after sucking out his last wreath, and heaving a profound sigh, he got up, and departed as solemnly as he came.
A more elastic footstep entered next; and now I opened my mouth for a “good-morning,” but closed it again, the salutation unachieved; for Hareton Earnshaw was performing his orison sotto voce, in a series of curses directed against every object he touched, while he rummaged a corner for a spade or shovel to dig through the drifts. He glanced over the back of the bench, dilating his nostrils, and thought as little of exchanging civilities with me as with my companion the cat. I guessed, by his preparations, that egress was allowed, and, leaving my hard couch, made a movement to follow him. He noticed this, and thrust at an inner door with the end of his spade, intimating by an inarticulate sound that there was the place where I must go, if I changed my locality.
It opened into the house, where the females were already astir; Zillah urging flakes of flame up the chimney with a colossal bellows; and Mrs. Heathcliff, kneeling on the hearth, reading a book by the aid of the blaze. She held her hand interposed between the furnace-heat and her eyes, and seemed absorbed in her occupation; desisting from it only to chide the servant for covering her with sparks, or to push away a dog, now and then, that snoozled its nose overforwardly into her face. I was surprised to see Heathcliff there also. He stood by the fire, his back towards me, just finishing a stormy scene with poor Zillah; who ever and anon interrupted her labour to pluck up the corner of her apron, and heave an indignant groan.
“And you, you worthless—” he broke out as I entered, turning to his daughter-in-law, and employing an epithet as harmless as duck, or sheep, but generally represented by a dash—. “There you are, at your idle tricks again! The rest of them do earn their bread—you live on my charity! Put your trash away, and find something to do. You shall pay me for the plague of having you eternally in my sight—do you hear, damnable jade?”
“I’ll put my trash away, because you can make me if I refuse,” answered the young lady, closing her book, and throwing it on a chair. “But I’ll not do anything, though you should swear your tongue out, except what I please!”
Heathcliff lifted his hand, and the speaker sprang to a safer distance, obviously acquainted with its weight. Having no desire to be entertained by a cat-and-dog combat, I stepped forward briskly, as if eager to partake the warmth of the hearth, and innocent of any knowledge of the interrupted dispute. Each had enough decorum to suspend further hostilities: Heathcliff placed his fists, out of temptation, in his pockets; Mrs. Heathcliff curled her lip, and walked to a seat far off, where she kept her word by playing the part of a statue during the remainder of my stay. That was not long. I declined joining their breakfast, and, at the first gleam of dawn, took an opportunity of escaping into the free air, now clear, and still, and cold as impalpable ice.
My landlord halloed for me to stop ere I reached the bottom of the garden, and offered to accompany me across the moor. It was well he did, for the whole hill-back was one billowy, white ocean; the swells and falls not indicating corresponding rises and depressions in the ground: many pits, at least, were filled to a level; and entire ranges of mounds, the refuse of the quarries, blotted from the chart which my yesterday’s walk left pictured in my mind. I had remarked on one side of the road, at intervals of six or seven yards, a line of upright stones, continued through the whole length of the barren: these were erected and daubed with lime on purpose to serve as guides in the dark, and also when a fall, like the present, confounded the deep swamps on either hand with the firmer path: but, excepting a dirty dot pointing up here and there, all traces of their existence had vanished: and my companion found it necessary to warn me frequently to steer to the right or left, when I imagined I was following, correctly, the windings of the road.
We exchanged little conversation, and he halted at the entrance of Thrushcross Park, saying, I could make no error there. Our adieux were limited to a hasty bow, and then I pushed forward, trusting to my own resources; for the porter’s lodge is untenanted as yet. The distance from the gate to the Grange is two miles; I believe I managed to make it four, what with losing myself among the trees, and sinking up to the neck in snow: a predicament which only those who have experienced it can appreciate. At any rate, whatever were my wanderings, the clock chimed twelve as I entered the house; and that gave exactly an hour for every mile of the usual way from Wuthering Heights.
My human fixture and her satellites rushed to welcome me; exclaiming, tumultuously, they had completely given me up: everybody conjectured that I perished last night; and they were wondering how they must set about the search for my remains. I bid them be quiet, now that they saw me returned, and, benumbed to my very heart, I dragged upstairs; whence, after putting on dry clothes, and pacing to and fro thirty or forty minutes, to restore the animal heat, I adjourned to my study, feeble as a kitten: almost too much so to enjoy the cheerful fire and smoking coffee which the servant had prepared for my refreshment.
CHAPTER IV
What vain weather-cocks we are! I, who had determined to hold myself independent of all social intercourse, and thanked my stars that, at length, I had lighted on a spot where it was next to impracticable—I, weak wretch, after maintaining till dusk a struggle with low spirits and solitude, was finally compelled to strike my colours; and under pretence of gaining information concerning the necessities of my establishment, I desired Mrs. Dean, when she brought in supper, to sit down while I ate it; hoping sincerely she would prove a regular gossip, and either rouse me to animation or lull me to sleep by her talk.
“You have lived here a considerable time,” I commenced; “did you not say sixteen years?”
“Eighteen, sir: I came when the mistress was married, to wait on her; after she died, the master retained me for his housekeeper.”
“Indeed.”
There ensued a pause. She was not a gossip, I feared; unless about her own affairs, and those could hardly interest me. However, having studied for an interval, with a fist on either knee, and a cloud of meditation over her ruddy countenance, she ejaculated—“Ah, times are greatly changed since then!”
“Yes,” I remarked, “you’ve seen a good many alterations, I suppose?”
“I have: and troubles too,” she said.
“Oh, I’ll turn the talk on my landlord’s family!” I thought to myself. “A good subject to start! And that pretty girl-widow, I should like to know her history: whether she be a native of the country, or, as is more probable, an exotic that the surly indigenae will not recognise for kin.” With this intention I asked Mrs. Dean why Heathcliff let Thrushcross Grange, and preferred living in a situation and residence so much inferior. “Is he not rich enough to keep the estate in good order?” I inquired.
“Rich, sir!” she returned. “He has nobody knows what money, and every year it increases. Yes, yes, he’s rich enough to live in a finer house than this: but he’s very near—close-handed; and, if he had meant to flit to Thrushcross Grange, as soon as he heard of a good tenant he could not have borne to miss the chance of getting a few hundreds more. It is strange people should be so greedy, when they are alone in the world!”
“He had a son, it seems?”
“Yes, he had one—he is dead.”
“And that young lady, Mrs. Heathcliff, is his widow?”
“Yes.”
“Where did she come from originally?”
“Why, sir, she is my late master’s daughter: Catherine Linton was her maiden name. I nursed her, poor thing! I did wish Mr. Heathcliff would remove here, and then we might have been together again.”
“What! Catherine Linton?” I exclaimed, astonished. But a minute’s reflection convinced me it was not my ghostly Catherine. “Then,” I continued, “my predecessor’s name was Linton?”
“It was.”
“And who is that Earnshaw: Hareton Earnshaw, who lives with Mr. Heathcliff? Are they relations?”
“No; he is the late Mrs. Linton’s nephew.”
“The young lady’s cousin, then?”
“Yes; and her husband was her cousin also: one on the mother’s, the other on the father’s side: Heathcliff married Mr. Linton’s sister.”
“I see the house at Wuthering Heights has ‘Earnshaw’ carved over the front door. Are they an old family?”
“Very old, sir; and Hareton is the last of them, as our Miss Cathy is of us—I mean, of the Lintons. Have you been to Wuthering Heights? I beg pardon for asking; but I should like to hear how she is!”
“Mrs. Heathcliff? she looked very well, and very handsome; yet, I think, not very happy.”
“Oh dear, I don’t wonder! And how did you like the master?”
“A rough fellow, rather, Mrs. Dean. Is not that his character?”
“Rough as a saw-edge, and hard as whinstone! The less you meddle with him the better.”
“He must have had some ups and downs in life to make him such a churl. Do you know anything of his history?”
“It’s a cuckoo’s, sir—I know all about it: except where he was born, and who were his parents, and how he got his money at first. And Hareton has been cast out like an unfledged dunnock! The unfortunate lad is the only one in all this parish that does not guess how he has been cheated.”
“Well, Mrs. Dean, it will be a charitable deed to tell me something of my neighbours: I feel I shall not rest if I go to bed; so be good enough to sit and chat an hour.”
“Oh, certainly, sir! I’ll just fetch a little sewing, and then I’ll sit as long as you please. But you’ve caught cold: I saw you shivering, and you must have some gruel to drive it out.”
The worthy woman bustled off, and I crouched nearer the fire; my head felt hot, and the rest of me chill: moreover, I was excited, almost to a pitch of foolishness, through my nerves and brain. This caused me to feel, not uncomfortable, but rather fearful (as I am still) of serious effects from the incidents of to-day and yesterday. She returned presently, bringing a smoking basin and a basket of work; and, having placed the former on the hob, drew in her seat, evidently pleased to find me so companionable.
* * * * *
Before I came to live here, she commenced—waiting no farther invitation to her story—I was almost always at Wuthering Heights; because my mother had nursed Mr. Hindley Earnshaw, that was Hareton’s father, and I got used to playing with the children: I ran errands too, and helped to make hay, and hung about the farm ready for anything that anybody would set me to. One fine summer morning—it was the beginning of harvest, I remember—Mr. Earnshaw, the old master, came downstairs, dressed for a journey; and, after he had told Joseph what was to be done during the day, he turned to Hindley, and Cathy, and me—for I sat eating my porridge with them—and he said, speaking to his son, “Now, my bonny man, I’m going to Liverpool to-day, what shall I bring you? You may choose what you like: only let it be little, for I shall walk there and back: sixty miles each way, that is a long spell!” Hindley named a fiddle, and then he asked Miss Cathy; she was hardly six years old, but she could ride any horse in the stable, and she chose a whip. He did not forget me; for he had a kind heart, though he was rather severe sometimes. He promised to bring me a pocketful of apples and pears, and then he kissed his children, said good-bye, and set off.
It seemed a long while to us all—the three days of his absence—and often did little Cathy ask when he would be home. Mrs. Earnshaw expected him by supper-time on the third evening, and she put the meal off hour after hour; there were no signs of his coming, however, and at last the children got tired of running down to the gate to look. Then it grew dark; she would have had them to bed, but they begged sadly to be allowed to stay up; and, just about eleven o’clock, the door-latch was raised quietly, and in stepped the master. He threw himself into a chair, laughing and groaning, and bid them all stand off, for he was nearly killed—he would not have such another walk for the three kingdoms.
“And at the end of it to be flighted to death!” he said, opening his great-coat, which he held bundled up in his arms. “See here, wife! I was never so beaten with anything in my life: but you must e’en take it as a gift of God; though it’s as dark almost as if it came from the devil.”
We crowded round, and over Miss Cathy’s head I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child; big enough both to walk and talk: indeed, its face looked older than Catherine’s; yet when it was set on its feet, it only stared round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand. I was frightened, and Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors: she did fly up, asking how he could fashion to bring that gipsy brat into the house, when they had their own bairns to feed and fend for? What he meant to do with it, and whether he were mad? The master tried to explain the matter; but he was really half dead with fatigue, and all that I could make out, amongst her scolding, was a tale of his seeing it starving, and houseless, and as good as dumb, in the streets of Liverpool, where he picked it up and inquired for its owner. Not a soul knew to whom it belonged, he said; and his money and time being both limited, he thought it better to take it home with him at once, than run into vain expenses there: because he was determined he would not leave it as he found it. Well, the conclusion was, that my mistress grumbled herself calm; and Mr. Earnshaw told me to wash it, and give it clean things, and let it sleep with the children.
Hindley and Cathy contented themselves with looking and listening till peace was restored: then, both began searching their father’s pockets for the presents he had promised them. The former was a boy of fourteen, but when he drew out what had been a fiddle, crushed to morsels in the great-coat, he blubbered aloud; and Cathy, when she learned the master had lost her whip in attending on the stranger, showed her humour by grinning and spitting at the stupid little thing; earning for her pains a sound blow from her father, to teach her cleaner manners. They entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even in their room; and I had no more sense, so I put it on the landing of the stairs, hoping it might be gone on the morrow. By chance, or else attracted by hearing his voice, it crept to Mr. Earnshaw’s door, and there he found it on quitting his chamber. Inquiries were made as to how it got there; I was obliged to confess, and in recompense for my cowardice and inhumanity was sent out of the house.
This was Heathcliff’s first introduction to the family. On coming back a few days afterwards (for I did not consider my banishment perpetual), I found they had christened him “Heathcliff”: it was the name of a son who died in childhood, and it has served him ever since, both for Christian and surname. Miss Cathy and he were now very thick; but Hindley hated him: and to say the truth I did the same; and we plagued and went on with him shamefully: for I wasn’t reasonable enough to feel my injustice, and the mistress never put in a word on his behalf when she saw him wronged.
He seemed a sullen, patient child; hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment: he would stand Hindley’s blows without winking or shedding a tear, and my pinches moved him only to draw in a breath and open his eyes, as if he had hurt himself by accident, and nobody was to blame. This endurance made old Earnshaw furious, when he discovered his son persecuting the poor fatherless child, as he called him. He took to Heathcliff strangely, believing all he said (for that matter, he said precious little, and generally the truth), and petting him up far above Cathy, who was too mischievous and wayward for a favourite.
So, from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in the house; and at Mrs. Earnshaw’s death, which happened in less than two years after, the young master had learned to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as a usurper of his parent’s affections and his privileges; and he grew bitter with brooding over these injuries. I sympathised a while; but when the children fell ill of the measles, and I had to tend them, and take on me the cares of a woman at once, I changed my idea. Heathcliff was dangerously sick; and while he lay at the worst he would have me constantly by his pillow: I suppose he felt I did a good deal for him, and he hadn’t wit to guess that I was compelled to do it. However, I will say this, he was the quietest child that ever nurse watched over. The difference between him and the others forced me to be less partial. Cathy and her brother harassed me terribly: he was as uncomplaining as a lamb; though hardness, not gentleness, made him give little trouble.
He got through, and the doctor affirmed it was in a great measure owing to me, and praised me for my care. I was vain of his commendations, and softened towards the being by whose means I earned them, and thus Hindley lost his last ally: still I couldn’t dote on Heathcliff, and I wondered often what my master saw to admire so much in the sullen boy; who never, to my recollection, repaid his indulgence by any sign of gratitude. He was not insolent to his benefactor, he was simply insensible; though knowing perfectly the hold he had on his heart, and conscious he had only to speak and all the house would be obliged to bend to his wishes. As an instance, I remember Mr. Earnshaw once bought a couple of colts at the parish fair, and gave the lads each one. Heathcliff took the handsomest, but it soon fell lame, and when he discovered it, he said to Hindley—
“You must exchange horses with me: I don’t like mine; and if you won’t I shall tell your father of the three thrashings you’ve given me this week, and show him my arm, which is black to the shoulder.” Hindley put out his tongue, and cuffed him over the ears. “You’d better do it at once,” he persisted, escaping to the porch (they were in the stable): “you will have to: and if I speak of these blows, you’ll get them again with interest.” “Off, dog!” cried Hindley, threatening him with an iron weight used for weighing potatoes and hay. “Throw it,” he replied, standing still, “and then I’ll tell how you boasted that you would turn me out of doors as soon as he died, and see whether he will not turn you out directly.” Hindley threw it, hitting him on the breast, and down he fell, but staggered up immediately, breathless and white; and, had not I prevented it, he would have gone just so to the master, and got full revenge by letting his condition plead for him, intimating who had caused it. “Take my colt, Gipsy, then!” said young Earnshaw. “And I pray that he may break your neck: take him, and be damned, you beggarly interloper! and wheedle my father out of all he has: only afterwards show him what you are, imp of Satan.—And take that, I hope he’ll kick out your brains!”
Heathcliff had gone to loose the beast, and shift it to his own stall; he was passing behind it, when Hindley finished his speech by knocking him under its feet, and without stopping to examine whether his hopes were fulfilled, ran away as fast as he could. I was surprised to witness how coolly the child gathered himself up, and went on with his intention; exchanging saddles and all, and then sitting down on a bundle of hay to overcome the qualm which the violent blow occasioned, before he entered the house. I persuaded him easily to let me lay the blame of his bruises on the horse: he minded little what tale was told since he had what he wanted. He complained so seldom, indeed, of such stirs as these, that I really thought him not vindictive: I was deceived completely, as you will hear.
CHAPTER V
In the course of time Mr. Earnshaw began to fail. He had been active and healthy, yet his strength left him suddenly; and when he was confined to the chimney-corner he grew grievously irritable. A nothing vexed him; and suspected slights of his authority nearly threw him into fits. This was especially to be remarked if any one attempted to impose upon, or domineer over, his favourite: he was painfully jealous lest a word should be spoken amiss to him; seeming to have got into his head the notion that, because he liked Heathcliff, all hated, and longed to do him an ill-turn. It was a disadvantage to the lad; for the kinder among us did not wish to fret the master, so we humoured his partiality; and that humouring was rich nourishment to the child’s pride and black tempers. Still it became in a manner necessary; twice, or thrice, Hindley’s manifestation of scorn, while his father was near, roused the old man to a fury: he seized his stick to strike him, and shook with rage that he could not do it.
At last, our curate (we had a curate then who made the living answer by teaching the little Lintons and Earnshaws, and farming his bit of land himself) advised that the young man should be sent to college; and Mr. Earnshaw agreed, though with a heavy spirit, for he said—“Hindley was nought, and would never thrive as where he wandered.”
I hoped heartily we should have peace now. It hurt me to think the master should be made uncomfortable by his own good deed. I fancied the discontent of age and disease arose from his family disagreements; as he would have it that it did: really, you know, sir, it was in his sinking frame. We might have got on tolerably, notwithstanding, but for two people—Miss Cathy, and Joseph, the servant: you saw him, I daresay, up yonder. He was, and is yet most likely, the wearisomest self-righteous Pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses to his neighbours. By his knack of sermonising and pious discoursing, he contrived to make a great impression on Mr. Earnshaw; and the more feeble the master became, the more influence he gained. He was relentless in worrying him about his soul’s concerns, and about ruling his children rigidly. He encouraged him to regard Hindley as a reprobate; and, night after night, he regularly grumbled out a long string of tales against Heathcliff and Catherine: always minding to flatter Earnshaw’s weakness by heaping the heaviest blame on the latter.
Certainly she had ways with her such as I never saw a child take up before; and she put all of us past our patience fifty times and oftener in a day: from the hour she came downstairs till the hour she went to bed, we had not a minute’s security that she wouldn’t be in mischief. Her spirits were always at high-water mark, her tongue always going—singing, laughing, and plaguing everybody who would not do the same. A wild, wicked slip she was—but she had the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile, and lightest foot in the parish: and, after all, I believe she meant no harm; for when once she made you cry in good earnest, it seldom happened that she would not keep you company, and oblige you to be quiet that you might comfort her. She was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him: yet she got chided more than any of us on his account. In play, she liked exceedingly to act the little mistress; using her hands freely, and commanding her companions: she did so to me, but I would not bear slapping and ordering; and so I let her know.
Now, Mr. Earnshaw did not understand jokes from his children: he had always been strict and grave with them; and Catherine, on her part, had no idea why her father should be crosser and less patient in his ailing condition than he was in his prime. His peevish reproofs wakened in her a naughty delight to provoke him: she was never so happy as when we were all scolding her at once, and she defying us with her bold, saucy look, and her ready words; turning Joseph’s religious curses into ridicule, baiting me, and doing just what her father hated most—showing how her pretended insolence, which he thought real, had more power over Heathcliff than his kindness: how the boy would do her bidding in anything, and his only when it suited his own inclination. After behaving as badly as possible all day, she sometimes came fondling to make it up at night. “Nay, Cathy,” the old man would say, “I cannot love thee, thou’rt worse than thy brother. Go, say thy prayers, child, and ask God’s pardon. I doubt thy mother and I must rue that we ever reared thee!” That made her cry, at first; and then being repulsed continually hardened her, and she laughed if I told her to say she was sorry for her faults, and beg to be forgiven.
But the hour came, at last, that ended Mr. Earnshaw’s troubles on earth. He died quietly in his chair one October evening, seated by the fire-side. A high wind blustered round the house, and roared in the chimney: it sounded wild and stormy, yet it was not cold, and we were all together—I, a little removed from the hearth, busy at my knitting, and Joseph reading his Bible near the table (for the servants generally sat in the house then, after their work was done). Miss Cathy had been sick, and that made her still; she leant against her father’s knee, and Heathcliff was lying on the floor with his head in her lap. I remember the master, before he fell into a doze, stroking her bonny hair—it pleased him rarely to see her gentle—and saying, “Why canst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?” And she turned her face up to his, and laughed, and answered, “Why cannot you always be a good man, father?” But as soon as she saw him vexed again, she kissed his hand, and said she would sing him to sleep. She began singing very low, till his fingers dropped from hers, and his head sank on his breast. Then I told her to hush, and not stir, for fear she should wake him. We all kept as mute as mice a full half-hour, and should have done so longer, only Joseph, having finished his chapter, got up and said that he must rouse the master for prayers and bed. He stepped forward, and called him by name, and touched his shoulder; but he would not move: so he took the candle and looked at him. I thought there was something wrong as he set down the light; and seizing the children each by an arm, whispered them to “frame upstairs, and make little din—they might pray alone that evening—he had summut to do.”
“I shall bid father good-night first,” said Catherine, putting her arms round his neck, before we could hinder her. The poor thing discovered her loss directly—she screamed out—“Oh, he’s dead, Heathcliff! he’s dead!” And they both set up a heart-breaking cry.
I joined my wail to theirs, loud and bitter; but Joseph asked what we could be thinking of to roar in that way over a saint in heaven. He told me to put on my cloak and run to Gimmerton for the doctor and the parson. I could not guess the use that either would be of, then. However, I went, through wind and rain, and brought one, the doctor, back with me; the other said he would come in the morning. Leaving Joseph to explain matters, I ran to the children’s room: their door was ajar, I saw they had never lain down, though it was past midnight; but they were calmer, and did not need me to console them. The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have hit on: no parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk; and, while I sobbed and listened, I could not help wishing we were all there safe together.
CHAPTER VI
Mr. Hindley came home to the funeral; and—a thing that amazed us, and set the neighbours gossiping right and left—he brought a wife with him. What she was, and where she was born, he never informed us: probably, she had neither money nor name to recommend her, or he would scarcely have kept the union from his father.
She was not one that would have disturbed the house much on her own account. Every object she saw, the moment she crossed the threshold, appeared to delight her; and every circumstance that took place about her: except the preparing for the burial, and the presence of the mourners. I thought she was half silly, from her behaviour while that went on: she ran into her chamber, and made me come with her, though I should have been dressing the children: and there she sat shivering and clasping her hands, and asking repeatedly—“Are they gone yet?” Then she began describing with hysterical emotion the effect it produced on her to see black; and started, and trembled, and, at last, fell a-weeping—and when I asked what was the matter, answered, she didn’t know; but she felt so afraid of dying! I imagined her as little likely to die as myself. She was rather thin, but young, and fresh-complexioned, and her eyes sparkled as bright as diamonds. I did remark, to be sure, that mounting the stairs made her breathe very quick; that the least sudden noise set her all in a quiver, and that she coughed troublesomely sometimes: but I knew nothing of what these symptoms portended, and had no impulse to sympathise with her. We don’t in general take to foreigners here, Mr. Lockwood, unless they take to us first.
Young Earnshaw was altered considerably in the three years of his absence. He had grown sparer, and lost his colour, and spoke and dressed quite differently; and, on the very day of his return, he told Joseph and me we must thenceforth quarter ourselves in the back-kitchen, and leave the house for him. Indeed, he would have carpeted and papered a small spare room for a parlour; but his wife expressed such pleasure at the white floor and huge glowing fireplace, at the pewter dishes and delf-case, and dog-kennel, and the wide space there was to move about in where they usually sat, that he thought it unnecessary to her comfort, and so dropped the intention.
She expressed pleasure, too, at finding a sister among her new acquaintance; and she prattled to Catherine, and kissed her, and ran about with her, and gave her quantities of presents, at the beginning. Her affection tired very soon, however, and when she grew peevish, Hindley became tyrannical. A few words from her, evincing a dislike to Heathcliff, were enough to rouse in him all his old hatred of the boy. He drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead; compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm.
Heathcliff bore his degradation pretty well at first, because Cathy taught him what she learnt, and worked or played with him in the fields. They both promised fair to grow up as rude as savages; the young master being entirely negligent how they behaved, and what they did, so they kept clear of him. He would not even have seen after their going to church on Sundays, only Joseph and the curate reprimanded his carelessness when they absented themselves; and that reminded him to order Heathcliff a flogging, and Catherine a fast from dinner or supper. But it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day, and the after punishment grew a mere thing to laugh at. The curate might set as many chapters as he pleased for Catherine to get by heart, and Joseph might thrash Heathcliff till his arm ached; they forgot everything the minute they were together again: at least the minute they had contrived some naughty plan of revenge; and many a time I’ve cried to myself to watch them growing more reckless daily, and I not daring to speak a syllable, for fear of losing the small power I still retained over the unfriended creatures. One Sunday evening, it chanced that they were banished from the sitting-room, for making a noise, or a light offence of the kind; and when I went to call them to supper, I could discover them nowhere. We searched the house, above and below, and the yard and stables; they were invisible: and, at last, Hindley in a passion told us to bolt the doors, and swore nobody should let them in that night. The household went to bed; and I, too anxious to lie down, opened my lattice and put my head out to hearken, though it rained: determined to admit them in spite of the prohibition, should they return. In a while, I distinguished steps coming up the road, and the light of a lantern glimmered through the gate. I threw a shawl over my head and ran to prevent them from waking Mr. Earnshaw by knocking. There was Heathcliff, by himself: it gave me a start to see him alone.
“Where is Miss Catherine?” I cried hurriedly. “No accident, I hope?” “At Thrushcross Grange,” he answered; “and I would have been there too, but they had not the manners to ask me to stay.” “Well, you will catch it!” I said: “you’ll never be content till you’re sent about your business. What in the world led you wandering to Thrushcross Grange?” “Let me get off my wet clothes, and I’ll tell you all about it, Nelly,” he replied. I bid him beware of rousing the master, and while he undressed and I waited to put out the candle, he continued—“Cathy and I escaped from the wash-house to have a ramble at liberty, and getting a glimpse of the Grange lights, we thought we would just go and see whether the Lintons passed their Sunday evenings standing shivering in corners, while their father and mother sat eating and drinking, and singing and laughing, and burning their eyes out before the fire. Do you think they do? Or reading sermons, and being catechised by their man-servant, and set to learn a column of Scripture names, if they don’t answer properly?” “Probably not,” I responded. “They are good children, no doubt, and don’t deserve the treatment you receive, for your bad conduct.” “Don’t cant, Nelly,” he said: “nonsense! We ran from the top of the Heights to the park, without stopping—Catherine completely beaten in the race, because she was barefoot. You’ll have to seek for her shoes in the bog to-morrow. We crept through a broken hedge, groped our way up the path, and planted ourselves on a flower-plot under the drawing-room window. The light came from thence; they had not put up the shutters, and the curtains were only half closed. Both of us were able to look in by standing on the basement, and clinging to the ledge, and we saw—ah! it was beautiful—a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers. Old Mr. and Mrs. Linton were not there; Edgar and his sister had it entirely to themselves. Shouldn’t they have been happy? We should have thought ourselves in heaven! And now, guess what your good children were doing? Isabella—I believe she is eleven, a year younger than Cathy—lay screaming at the farther end of the room, shrieking as if witches were running red-hot needles into her. Edgar stood on the hearth weeping silently, and in the middle of the table sat a little dog, shaking its paw and yelping; which, from their mutual accusations, we understood they had nearly pulled in two between them. The idiots! That was their pleasure! to quarrel who should hold a heap of warm hair, and each begin to cry because both, after struggling to get it, refused to take it. We laughed outright at the petted things; we did despise them! When would you catch me wishing to have what Catherine wanted? or find us by ourselves, seeking entertainment in yelling, and sobbing, and rolling on the ground, divided by the whole room? I’d not exchange, for a thousand lives, my condition here, for Edgar Linton’s at Thrushcross Grange—not if I might have the privilege of flinging Joseph off the highest gable, and painting the house-front with Hindley’s blood!”
“Hush, hush!” I interrupted. “Still you have not told me, Heathcliff, how Catherine is left behind?”
“I told you we laughed,” he answered. “The Lintons heard us, and with one accord they shot like arrows to the door; there was silence, and then a cry, ‘Oh, mamma, mamma! Oh, papa! Oh, mamma, come here. Oh, papa, oh!’ They really did howl out something in that way. We made frightful noises to terrify them still more, and then we dropped off the ledge, because somebody was drawing the bars, and we felt we had better flee. I had Cathy by the hand, and was urging her on, when all at once she fell down. ‘Run, Heathcliff, run!’ she whispered. ‘They have let the bull-dog loose, and he holds me!’ The devil had seized her ankle, Nelly: I heard his abominable snorting. She did not yell out—no! she would have scorned to do it, if she had been spitted on the horns of a mad cow. I did, though: I vociferated curses enough to annihilate any fiend in Christendom; and I got a stone and thrust it between his jaws, and tried with all my might to cram it down his throat. A beast of a servant came up with a lantern, at last, shouting—‘Keep fast, Skulker, keep fast!’ He changed his note, however, when he saw Skulker’s game. The dog was throttled off; his huge, purple tongue hanging half a foot out of his mouth, and his pendent lips streaming with bloody slaver. The man took Cathy up; she was sick: not from fear, I’m certain, but from pain. He carried her in; I followed, grumbling execrations and vengeance. ‘What prey, Robert?’ hallooed Linton from the entrance. ‘Skulker has caught a little girl, sir,’ he replied; ‘and there’s a lad here,’ he added, making a clutch at me, ‘who looks an out-and-outer! Very like the robbers were for putting them through the window to open the doors to the gang after all were asleep, that they might murder us at their ease. Hold your tongue, you foul-mouthed thief, you! you shall go to the gallows for this. Mr. Linton, sir, don’t lay by your gun.’ ‘No, no, Robert,’ said the old fool. ‘The rascals knew that yesterday was my rent-day: they thought to have me cleverly. Come in; I’ll furnish them a reception. There, John, fasten the chain. Give Skulker some water, Jenny. To beard a magistrate in his stronghold, and on the Sabbath, too! Where will their insolence stop? Oh, my dear Mary, look here! Don’t be afraid, it is but a boy—yet the villain scowls so plainly in his face; would it not be a kindness to the country to hang him at once, before he shows his nature in acts as well as features?’ He pulled me under the chandelier, and Mrs. Linton placed her spectacles on her nose and raised her hands in horror. The cowardly children crept nearer also, Isabella lisping—‘Frightful thing! Put him in the cellar, papa. He’s exactly like the son of the fortune-teller that stole my tame pheasant. Isn’t he, Edgar?’
“While they examined me, Cathy came round; she heard the last speech, and laughed. Edgar Linton, after an inquisitive stare, collected sufficient wit to recognise her. They see us at church, you know, though we seldom meet them elsewhere. ‘That’s Miss Earnshaw!’ he whispered to his mother, ‘and look how Skulker has bitten her—how her foot bleeds!’
“‘Miss Earnshaw? Nonsense!’ cried the dame; ‘Miss Earnshaw scouring the country with a gipsy! And yet, my dear, the child is in mourning—surely it is—and she may be lamed for life!’
“‘What culpable carelessness in her brother!’ exclaimed Mr. Linton, turning from me to Catherine. ‘I’ve understood from Shielders’” (that was the curate, sir) “‘that he lets her grow up in absolute heathenism. But who is this? Where did she pick up this companion? Oho! I declare he is that strange acquisition my late neighbour made, in his journey to Liverpool—a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway.’
“‘A wicked boy, at all events,’ remarked the old lady, ‘and quite unfit for a decent house! Did you notice his language, Linton? I’m shocked that my children should have heard it.’
“I recommenced cursing—don’t be angry, Nelly—and so Robert was ordered to take me off. I refused to go without Cathy; he dragged me into the garden, pushed the lantern into my hand, assured me that Mr. Earnshaw should be informed of my behaviour, and, bidding me march directly, secured the door again. The curtains were still looped up at one corner, and I resumed my station as spy; because, if Catherine had wished to return, I intended shattering their great glass panes to a million of fragments, unless they let her out. She sat on the sofa quietly. Mrs. Linton took off the grey cloak of the dairy-maid which we had borrowed for our excursion, shaking her head and expostulating with her, I suppose: she was a young lady, and they made a distinction between her treatment and mine. Then the woman-servant brought a basin of warm water, and washed her feet; and Mr. Linton mixed a tumbler of negus, and Isabella emptied a plateful of cakes into her lap, and Edgar stood gaping at a distance. Afterwards, they dried and combed her beautiful hair, and gave her a pair of enormous slippers, and wheeled her to the fire; and I left her, as merry as she could be, dividing her food between the little dog and Skulker, whose nose she pinched as he ate; and kindling a spark of spirit in the vacant blue eyes of the Lintons—a dim reflection from her own enchanting face. I saw they were full of stupid admiration; she is so immeasurably superior to them—to everybody on earth, is she not, Nelly?”
“There will more come of this business than you reckon on,” I answered, covering him up and extinguishing the light. “You are incurable, Heathcliff; and Mr. Hindley will have to proceed to extremities, see if he won’t.” My words came truer than I desired. The luckless adventure made Earnshaw furious. And then Mr. Linton, to mend matters, paid us a visit himself on the morrow, and read the young master such a lecture on the road he guided his family, that he was stirred to look about him, in earnest. Heathcliff received no flogging, but he was told that the first word he spoke to Miss Catherine should ensure a dismissal; and Mrs. Earnshaw undertook to keep her sister-in-law in due restraint when she returned home; employing art, not force: with force she would have found it impossible.
CHAPTER VII
Cathy stayed at Thrushcross Grange five weeks: till Christmas. By that time her ankle was thoroughly cured, and her manners much improved. The mistress visited her often in the interval, and commenced her plan of reform by trying to raise her self-respect with fine clothes and flattery, which she took readily; so that, instead of a wild, hatless little savage jumping into the house, and rushing to squeeze us all breathless, there lighted from a handsome black pony a very dignified person, with brown ringlets falling from the cover of a feathered beaver, and a long cloth habit, which she was obliged to hold up with both hands that she might sail in. Hindley lifted her from her horse, exclaiming delightedly, “Why, Cathy, you are quite a beauty! I should scarcely have known you: you look like a lady now. Isabella Linton is not to be compared with her, is she, Frances?” “Isabella has not her natural advantages,” replied his wife: “but she must mind and not grow wild again here. Ellen, help Miss Catherine off with her things—Stay, dear, you will disarrange your curls—let me untie your hat.”
I removed the habit, and there shone forth beneath a grand plaid silk frock, white trousers, and burnished shoes; and, while her eyes sparkled joyfully when the dogs came bounding up to welcome her, she dared hardly touch them lest they should fawn upon her splendid garments. She kissed me gently: I was all flour making the Christmas cake, and it would not have done to give me a hug; and then she looked round for Heathcliff. Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw watched anxiously their meeting; thinking it would enable them to judge, in some measure, what grounds they had for hoping to succeed in separating the two friends.
Heathcliff was hard to discover, at first. If he were careless, and uncared for, before Catherine’s absence, he had been ten times more so since. Nobody but I even did him the kindness to call him a dirty boy, and bid him wash himself, once a week; and children of his age seldom have a natural pleasure in soap and water. Therefore, not to mention his clothes, which had seen three months’ service in mire and dust, and his thick uncombed hair, the surface of his face and hands was dismally beclouded. He might well skulk behind the settle, on beholding such a bright, graceful damsel enter the house, instead of a rough-headed counterpart of himself, as he expected. “Is Heathcliff not here?” she demanded, pulling off her gloves, and displaying fingers wonderfully whitened with doing nothing and staying indoors.
“Heathcliff, you may come forward,” cried Mr. Hindley, enjoying his discomfiture, and gratified to see what a forbidding young blackguard he would be compelled to present himself. “You may come and wish Miss Catherine welcome, like the other servants.”
Cathy, catching a glimpse of her friend in his concealment, flew to embrace him; she bestowed seven or eight kisses on his cheek within the second, and then stopped, and drawing back, burst into a laugh, exclaiming, “Why, how very black and cross you look! and how—how funny and grim! But that’s because I’m used to Edgar and Isabella Linton. Well, Heathcliff, have you forgotten me?”
She had some reason to put the question, for shame and pride threw double gloom over his countenance, and kept him immovable.
“Shake hands, Heathcliff,” said Mr. Earnshaw, condescendingly; “once in a way, that is permitted.”
“I shall not,” replied the boy, finding his tongue at last; “I shall not stand to be laughed at. I shall not bear it!”
And he would have broken from the circle, but Miss Cathy seized him again.
“I did not mean to laugh at you,” she said; “I could not hinder myself: Heathcliff, shake hands at least! What are you sulky for? It was only that you looked odd. If you wash your face and brush your hair, it will be all right: but you are so dirty!”
She gazed concernedly at the dusky fingers she held in her own, and also at her dress; which she feared had gained no embellishment from its contact with his.
“You needn’t have touched me!” he answered, following her eye and snatching away his hand. “I shall be as dirty as I please: and I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty.”
With that he dashed headforemost out of the room, amid the merriment of the master and mistress, and to the serious disturbance of Catherine; who could not comprehend how her remarks should have produced such an exhibition of bad temper.
After playing lady’s-maid to the new-comer, and putting my cakes in the oven, and making the house and kitchen cheerful with great fires, befitting Christmas-eve, I prepared to sit down and amuse myself by singing carols, all alone; regardless of Joseph’s affirmations that he considered the merry tunes I chose as next door to songs. He had retired to private prayer in his chamber, and Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw were engaging Missy’s attention by sundry gay trifles bought for her to present to the little Lintons, as an acknowledgment of their kindness. They had invited them to spend the morrow at Wuthering Heights, and the invitation had been accepted, on one condition: Mrs. Linton begged that her darlings might be kept carefully apart from that “naughty swearing boy.”
Under these circumstances I remained solitary. I smelt the rich scent of the heating spices; and admired the shining kitchen utensils, the polished clock, decked in holly, the silver mugs ranged on a tray ready to be filled with mulled ale for supper; and above all, the speckless purity of my particular care—the scoured and well-swept floor. I gave due inward applause to every object, and then I remembered how old Earnshaw used to come in when all was tidied, and call me a cant lass, and slip a shilling into my hand as a Christmas-box; and from that I went on to think of his fondness for Heathcliff, and his dread lest he should suffer neglect after death had removed him: and that naturally led me to consider the poor lad’s situation now, and from singing I changed my mind to crying. It struck me soon, however, there would be more sense in endeavouring to repair some of his wrongs than shedding tears over them: I got up and walked into the court to seek him. He was not far; I found him smoothing the glossy coat of the new pony in the stable, and feeding the other beasts, according to custom.
“Make haste, Heathcliff!” I said, “the kitchen is so comfortable; and Joseph is upstairs: make haste, and let me dress you smart before Miss Cathy comes out, and then you can sit together, with the whole hearth to yourselves, and have a long chatter till bedtime.”
He proceeded with his task, and never turned his head towards me.
“Come—are you coming?” I continued. “There’s a little cake for each of you, nearly enough; and you’ll need half-an-hour’s donning.”
I waited five minutes, but getting no answer left him. Catherine supped with her brother and sister-in-law: Joseph and I joined at an unsociable meal, seasoned with reproofs on one side and sauciness on the other. His cake and cheese remained on the table all night for the fairies. He managed to continue work till nine o’clock, and then marched dumb and dour to his chamber. Cathy sat up late, having a world of things to order for the reception of her new friends: she came into the kitchen once to speak to her old one; but he was gone, and she only stayed to ask what was the matter with him, and then went back. In the morning he rose early; and, as it was a holiday, carried his ill-humour on to the moors; not re-appearing till the family were departed for church. Fasting and reflection seemed to have brought him to a better spirit. He hung about me for a while, and having screwed up his courage, exclaimed abruptly—“Nelly, make me decent, I’m going to be good.”
“High time, Heathcliff,” I said; “you have grieved Catherine: she’s sorry she ever came home, I daresay! It looks as if you envied her, because she is more thought of than you.”
The notion of envying Catherine was incomprehensible to him, but the notion of grieving her he understood clearly enough.
“Did she say she was grieved?” he inquired, looking very serious.
“She cried when I told her you were off again this morning.”
“Well, I cried last night,” he returned, “and I had more reason to cry than she.”
“Yes: you had the reason of going to bed with a proud heart and an empty stomach,” said I. “Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves. But, if you be ashamed of your touchiness, you must ask pardon, mind, when she comes in. You must go up and offer to kiss her, and say—you know best what to say; only do it heartily, and not as if you thought her converted into a stranger by her grand dress. And now, though I have dinner to get ready, I’ll steal time to arrange you so that Edgar Linton shall look quite a doll beside you: and that he does. You are younger, and yet, I’ll be bound, you are taller and twice as broad across the shoulders; you could knock him down in a twinkling; don’t you feel that you could?”
Heathcliff’s face brightened a moment; then it was overcast afresh, and he sighed.
“But, Nelly, if I knocked him down twenty times, that wouldn’t make him less handsome or me more so. I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be!”
“And cried for mamma at every turn,” I added, “and trembled if a country lad heaved his fist against you, and sat at home all day for a shower of rain. Oh, Heathcliff, you are showing a poor spirit! Come to the glass, and I’ll let you see what you should wish. Do you mark those two lines between your eyes; and those thick brows, that, instead of rising arched, sink in the middle; and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil’s spies? Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes. Don’t get the expression of a vicious cur that appears to know the kicks it gets are its desert, and yet hates all the world, as well as the kicker, for what it suffers.”
“In other words, I must wish for Edgar Linton’s great blue eyes and even forehead,” he replied. “I do—and that won’t help me to them.”
“A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad,” I continued, “if you were a regular black; and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly. And now that we’ve done washing, and combing, and sulking—tell me whether you don’t think yourself rather handsome? I’ll tell you, I do. You’re fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week’s income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together? And you were kidnapped by wicked sailors and brought to England. Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth; and the thoughts of what I was should give me courage and dignity to support the oppressions of a little farmer!”
So I chattered on; and Heathcliff gradually lost his frown and began to look quite pleasant, when all at once our conversation was interrupted by a rumbling sound moving up the road and entering the court. He ran to the window and I to the door, just in time to behold the two Lintons descend from the family carriage, smothered in cloaks and furs, and the Earnshaws dismount from their horses: they often rode to church in winter. Catherine took a hand of each of the children, and brought them into the house and set them before the fire, which quickly put colour into their white faces.
I urged my companion to hasten now and show his amiable humour, and he willingly obeyed; but ill luck would have it that, as he opened the door leading from the kitchen on one side, Hindley opened it on the other. They met, and the master, irritated at seeing him clean and cheerful, or, perhaps, eager to keep his promise to Mrs. Linton, shoved him back with a sudden thrust, and angrily bade Joseph “keep the fellow out of the room—send him into the garret till dinner is over. He’ll be cramming his fingers in the tarts and stealing the fruit, if left alone with them a minute.”
“Nay, sir,” I could not avoid answering, “he’ll touch nothing, not he: and I suppose he must have his share of the dainties as well as we.”
“He shall have his share of my hand, if I catch him downstairs till dark,” cried Hindley. “Begone, you vagabond! What! you are attempting the coxcomb, are you? Wait till I get hold of those elegant locks—see if I won’t pull them a bit longer!”
“They are long enough already,” observed Master Linton, peeping from the doorway; “I wonder they don’t make his head ache. It’s like a colt’s mane over his eyes!”
He ventured this remark without any intention to insult; but Heathcliff’s violent nature was not prepared to endure the appearance of impertinence from one whom he seemed to hate, even then, as a rival. He seized a tureen of hot apple sauce, the first thing that came under his gripe, and dashed it full against the speaker’s face and neck; who instantly commenced a lament that brought Isabella and Catherine hurrying to the place. Mr. Earnshaw snatched up the culprit directly and conveyed him to his chamber; where, doubtless, he administered a rough remedy to cool the fit of passion, for he appeared red and breathless. I got the dish-cloth, and rather spitefully scrubbed Edgar’s nose and mouth, affirming it served him right for meddling. His sister began weeping to go home, and Cathy stood by confounded, blushing for all.
“You should not have spoken to him!” she expostulated with Master Linton. “He was in a bad temper, and now you’ve spoilt your visit; and he’ll be flogged: I hate him to be flogged! I can’t eat my dinner. Why did you speak to him, Edgar?”
“I didn’t,” sobbed the youth, escaping from my hands, and finishing the remainder of the purification with his cambric pocket-handkerchief. “I promised mamma that I wouldn’t say one word to him, and I didn’t.”
“Well, don’t cry,” replied Catherine, contemptuously; “you’re not killed. Don’t make more mischief; my brother is coming: be quiet! Hush, Isabella! Has anybody hurt you?”
“There, there, children—to your seats!” cried Hindley, bustling in. “That brute of a lad has warmed me nicely. Next time, Master Edgar, take the law into your own fists—it will give you an appetite!”
The little party recovered its equanimity at sight of the fragrant feast. They were hungry after their ride, and easily consoled, since no real harm had befallen them. Mr. Earnshaw carved bountiful platefuls, and the mistress made them merry with lively talk. I waited behind her chair, and was pained to behold Catherine, with dry eyes and an indifferent air, commence cutting up the wing of a goose before her. “An unfeeling child,” I thought to myself; “how lightly she dismisses her old playmate’s troubles. I could not have imagined her to be so selfish.” She lifted a mouthful to her lips: then she set it down again: her cheeks flushed, and the tears gushed over them. She slipped her fork to the floor, and hastily dived under the cloth to conceal her emotion. I did not call her unfeeling long; for I perceived she was in purgatory throughout the day, and wearying to find an opportunity of getting by herself, or paying a visit to Heathcliff, who had been locked up by the master: as I discovered, on endeavouring to introduce to him a private mess of victuals.
In the evening we had a dance. Cathy begged that he might be liberated then, as Isabella Linton had no partner: her entreaties were vain, and I was appointed to supply the deficiency. We got rid of all gloom in the excitement of the exercise, and our pleasure was increased by the arrival of the Gimmerton band, mustering fifteen strong: a trumpet, a trombone, clarionets, bassoons, French horns, and a bass viol, besides singers. They go the rounds of all the respectable houses, and receive contributions every Christmas, and we esteemed it a first-rate treat to hear them. After the usual carols had been sung, we set them to songs and glees. Mrs. Earnshaw loved the music, and so they gave us plenty.
Catherine loved it too: but she said it sounded sweetest at the top of the steps, and she went up in the dark: I followed. They shut the house door below, never noting our absence, it was so full of people. She made no stay at the stairs’-head, but mounted farther, to the garret where Heathcliff was confined, and called him. He stubbornly declined answering for a while: she persevered, and finally persuaded him to hold communion with her through the boards. I let the poor things converse unmolested, till I supposed the songs were going to cease, and the singers to get some refreshment: then I clambered up the ladder to warn her. Instead of finding her outside, I heard her voice within. The little monkey had crept by the skylight of one garret, along the roof, into the skylight of the other, and it was with the utmost difficulty I could coax her out again. When she did come, Heathcliff came with her, and she insisted that I should take him into the kitchen, as my fellow-servant had gone to a neighbour’s, to be removed from the sound of our “devil’s psalmody,” as it pleased him to call it. I told them I intended by no means to encourage their tricks: but as the prisoner had never broken his fast since yesterday’s dinner, I would wink at his cheating Mr. Hindley that once. He went down: I set him a stool by the fire, and offered him a quantity of good things: but he was sick and could eat little, and my attempts to entertain him were thrown away. He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands, and remained rapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely—“I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don’t care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!”
“For shame, Heathcliff!” said I. “It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.”
“No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,” he returned. “I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I’ll plan it out: while I’m thinking of that I don’t feel pain.”
But, Mr. Lockwood, I forget these tales cannot divert you. I’m annoyed how I should dream of chattering on at such a rate; and your gruel cold, and you nodding for bed! I could have told Heathcliff’s history, all that you need hear, in half a dozen words.
* * * * *
Thus interrupting herself, the housekeeper rose, and proceeded to lay aside her sewing; but I felt incapable of moving from the hearth, and I was very far from nodding. “Sit still, Mrs. Dean,” I cried; “do sit still another half-hour. You’ve done just right to tell the story leisurely. That is the method I like; and you must finish it in the same style. I am interested in every character you have mentioned, more or less.”
“The clock is on the stroke of eleven, sir.”
“No matter—I’m not accustomed to go to bed in the long hours. One or two is early enough for a person who lies till ten.”
“You shouldn’t lie till ten. There’s the very prime of the morning gone long before that time. A person who has not done one-half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.”
“Nevertheless, Mrs. Dean, resume your chair; because to-morrow I intend lengthening the night till afternoon. I prognosticate for myself an obstinate cold, at least.”
“I hope not, sir. Well, you must allow me to leap over some three years; during that space Mrs. Earnshaw—”
“No, no, I’ll allow nothing of the sort! Are you acquainted with the mood of mind in which, if you were seated alone, and the cat licking its kitten on the rug before you, you would watch the operation so intently that puss’s neglect of one ear would put you seriously out of temper?”
“A terribly lazy mood, I should say.”
“On the contrary, a tiresomely active one. It is mine, at present; and, therefore, continue minutely. I perceive that people in these regions acquire over people in towns the value that a spider in a dungeon does over a spider in a cottage, to their various occupants; and yet the deepened attraction is not entirely owing to the situation of the looker-on. They do live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface, change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible; and I was a fixed unbeliever in any love of a year’s standing. One state resembles setting a hungry man down to a single dish, on which he may concentrate his entire appetite and do it justice; the other, introducing him to a table laid out by French cooks: he can perhaps extract as much enjoyment from the whole; but each part is a mere atom in his regard and remembrance.”
“Oh! here we are the same as anywhere else, when you get to know us,” observed Mrs. Dean, somewhat puzzled at my speech.
“Excuse me,” I responded; “you, my good friend, are a striking evidence against that assertion. Excepting a few provincialisms of slight consequence, you have no marks of the manners which I am habituated to consider as peculiar to your class. I am sure you have thought a great deal more than the generality of servants think. You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties for want of occasions for frittering your life away in silly trifles.”
Mrs. Dean laughed.
“I certainly esteem myself a steady, reasonable kind of body,” she said; “not exactly from living among the hills and seeing one set of faces, and one series of actions, from year’s end to year’s end; but I have undergone sharp discipline, which has taught me wisdom; and then, I have read more than you would fancy, Mr. Lockwood. You could not open a book in this library that I have not looked into, and got something out of also: unless it be that range of Greek and Latin, and that of French; and those I know one from another: it is as much as you can expect of a poor man’s daughter. However, if I am to follow my story in true gossip’s fashion, I had better go on; and instead of leaping three years, I will be content to pass to the next summer—the summer of 1778, that is nearly twenty-three years ago.”
CHAPTER VIII
On the morning of a fine June day my first bonny little nursling, and the last of the ancient Earnshaw stock, was born. We were busy with the hay in a far-away field, when the girl that usually brought our breakfasts came running an hour too soon across the meadow and up the lane, calling me as she ran.
“Oh, such a grand bairn!” she panted out. “The finest lad that ever breathed! But the doctor says missis must go: he says she’s been in a consumption these many months. I heard him tell Mr. Hindley: and now she has nothing to keep her, and she’ll be dead before winter. You must come home directly. You’re to nurse it, Nelly: to feed it with sugar and milk, and take care of it day and night. I wish I were you, because it will be all yours when there is no missis!”
“But is she very ill?” I asked, flinging down my rake and tying my bonnet.
“I guess she is; yet she looks bravely,” replied the girl, “and she talks as if she thought of living to see it grow a man. She’s out of her head for joy, it’s such a beauty! If I were her I’m certain I should not die: I should get better at the bare sight of it, in spite of Kenneth. I was fairly mad at him. Dame Archer brought the cherub down to master, in the house, and his face just began to light up, when the old croaker steps forward, and says he—‘Earnshaw, it’s a blessing your wife has been spared to leave you this son. When she came, I felt convinced we shouldn’t keep her long; and now, I must tell you, the winter will probably finish her. Don’t take on, and fret about it too much: it can’t be helped. And besides, you should have known better than to choose such a rush of a lass!’”
“And what did the master answer?” I inquired.
“I think he swore: but I didn’t mind him, I was straining to see the bairn,” and she began again to describe it rapturously. I, as zealous as herself, hurried eagerly home to admire, on my part; though I was very sad for Hindley’s sake. He had room in his heart only for two idols—his wife and himself: he doted on both, and adored one, and I couldn’t conceive how he would bear the loss.
When we got to Wuthering Heights, there he stood at the front door; and, as I passed in, I asked, “how was the baby?”
“Nearly ready to run about, Nell!” he replied, putting on a cheerful smile.
“And the mistress?” I ventured to inquire; “the doctor says she’s—”
“Damn the doctor!” he interrupted, reddening. “Frances is quite right: she’ll be perfectly well by this time next week. Are you going upstairs? will you tell her that I’ll come, if she’ll promise not to talk. I left her because she would not hold her tongue; and she must—tell her Mr. Kenneth says she must be quiet.”
I delivered this message to Mrs. Earnshaw; she seemed in flighty spirits, and replied merrily, “I hardly spoke a word, Ellen, and there he has gone out twice, crying. Well, say I promise I won’t speak: but that does not bind me not to laugh at him!”
Poor soul! Till within a week of her death that gay heart never failed her; and her husband persisted doggedly, nay, furiously, in affirming her health improved every day. When Kenneth warned him that his medicines were useless at that stage of the malady, and he needn’t put him to further expense by attending her, he retorted, “I know you need not—she’s well—she does not want any more attendance from you! She never was in a consumption. It was a fever; and it is gone: her pulse is as slow as mine now, and her cheek as cool.”
He told his wife the same story, and she seemed to believe him; but one night, while leaning on his shoulder, in the act of saying she thought she should be able to get up to-morrow, a fit of coughing took her—a very slight one—he raised her in his arms; she put her two hands about his neck, her face changed, and she was dead.
As the girl had anticipated, the child Hareton fell wholly into my hands. Mr. Earnshaw, provided he saw him healthy and never heard him cry, was contented, as far as regarded him. For himself, he grew desperate: his sorrow was of that kind that will not lament. He neither wept nor prayed; he cursed and defied: execrated God and man, and gave himself up to reckless dissipation. The servants could not bear his tyrannical and evil conduct long: Joseph and I were the only two that would stay. I had not the heart to leave my charge; and besides, you know, I had been his foster-sister, and excused his behaviour more readily than a stranger would. Joseph remained to hector over tenants and labourers; and because it was his vocation to be where he had plenty of wickedness to reprove.
The master’s bad ways and bad companions formed a pretty example for Catherine and Heathcliff. His treatment of the latter was enough to make a fiend of a saint. And, truly, it appeared as if the lad were possessed of something diabolical at that period. He delighted to witness Hindley degrading himself past redemption; and became daily more notable for savage sullenness and ferocity. I could not half tell what an infernal house we had. The curate dropped calling, and nobody decent came near us, at last; unless Edgar Linton’s visits to Miss Cathy might be an exception. At fifteen she was the queen of the country-side; she had no peer; and she did turn out a haughty, headstrong creature! I own I did not like her, after infancy was past; and I vexed her frequently by trying to bring down her arrogance: she never took an aversion to me, though. She had a wondrous constancy to old attachments: even Heathcliff kept his hold on her affections unalterably; and young Linton, with all his superiority, found it difficult to make an equally deep impression. He was my late master: that is his portrait over the fireplace. It used to hang on one side, and his wife’s on the other; but hers has been removed, or else you might see something of what she was. Can you make that out?
Mrs. Dean raised the candle, and I discerned a soft-featured face, exceedingly resembling the young lady at the Heights, but more pensive and amiable in expression. It formed a sweet picture. The long light hair curled slightly on the temples; the eyes were large and serious; the figure almost too graceful. I did not marvel how Catherine Earnshaw could forget her first friend for such an individual. I marvelled much how he, with a mind to correspond with his person, could fancy my idea of Catherine Earnshaw.
“A very agreeable portrait,” I observed to the house-keeper. “Is it like?”
“Yes,” she answered; “but he looked better when he was animated; that is his everyday countenance: he wanted spirit in general.”
Catherine had kept up her acquaintance with the Lintons since her five-weeks’ residence among them; and as she had no temptation to show her rough side in their company, and had the sense to be ashamed of being rude where she experienced such invariable courtesy, she imposed unwittingly on the old lady and gentleman by her ingenious cordiality; gained the admiration of Isabella, and the heart and soul of her brother: acquisitions that flattered her from the first—for she was full of ambition—and led her to adopt a double character without exactly intending to deceive any one. In the place where she heard Heathcliff termed a “vulgar young ruffian,” and “worse than a brute,” she took care not to act like him; but at home she had small inclination to practise politeness that would only be laughed at, and restrain an unruly nature when it would bring her neither credit nor praise.
Mr. Edgar seldom mustered courage to visit Wuthering Heights openly. He had a terror of Earnshaw’s reputation, and shrunk from encountering him; and yet he was always received with our best attempts at civility: the master himself avoided offending him, knowing why he came; and if he could not be gracious, kept out of the way. I rather think his appearance there was distasteful to Catherine; she was not artful, never played the coquette, and had evidently an objection to her two friends meeting at all; for when Heathcliff expressed contempt of Linton in his presence, she could not half coincide, as she did in his absence; and when Linton evinced disgust and antipathy to Heathcliff, she dared not treat his sentiments with indifference, as if depreciation of her playmate were of scarcely any consequence to her. I’ve had many a laugh at her perplexities and untold troubles, which she vainly strove to hide from my mockery. That sounds ill-natured: but she was so proud, it became really impossible to pity her distresses, till she should be chastened into more humility. She did bring herself, finally, to confess, and to confide in me: there was not a soul else that she might fashion into an adviser.
Mr. Hindley had gone from home one afternoon, and Heathcliff presumed to give himself a holiday on the strength of it. He had reached the age of sixteen then, I think, and without having bad features, or being deficient in intellect, he contrived to convey an impression of inward and outward repulsiveness that his present aspect retains no traces of. In the first place, he had by that time lost the benefit of his early education: continual hard work, begun soon and concluded late, had extinguished any curiosity he once possessed in pursuit of knowledge, and any love for books or learning. His childhood’s sense of superiority, instilled into him by the favours of old Mr. Earnshaw, was faded away. He struggled long to keep up an equality with Catherine in her studies, and yielded with poignant though silent regret: but he yielded completely; and there was no prevailing on him to take a step in the way of moving upward, when he found he must, necessarily, sink beneath his former level. Then personal appearance sympathised with mental deterioration: he acquired a slouching gait and ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of unsociable moroseness; and he took a grim pleasure, apparently, in exciting the aversion rather than the esteem of his few acquaintance.
Catherine and he were constant companions still at his seasons of respite from labour; but he had ceased to express his fondness for her in words, and recoiled with angry suspicion from her girlish caresses, as if conscious there could be no gratification in lavishing such marks of affection on him. On the before-named occasion he came into the house to announce his intention of doing nothing, while I was assisting Miss Cathy to arrange her dress: she had not reckoned on his taking it into his head to be idle; and imagining she would have the whole place to herself, she managed, by some means, to inform Mr. Edgar of her brother’s absence, and was then preparing to receive him.
“Cathy, are you busy this afternoon?” asked Heathcliff. “Are you going anywhere?”
“No, it is raining,” she answered.
“Why have you that silk frock on, then?” he said. “Nobody coming here, I hope?”
“Not that I know of,” stammered Miss: “but you should be in the field now, Heathcliff. It is an hour past dinner time; I thought you were gone.”
“Hindley does not often free us from his accursed presence,” observed the boy. “I’ll not work any more to-day: I’ll stay with you.”
“Oh, but Joseph will tell,” she suggested; “you’d better go!”
“Joseph is loading lime on the further side of Penistone Crags; it will take him till dark, and he’ll never know.”
So saying, he lounged to the fire, and sat down. Catherine reflected an instant, with knitted brows—she found it needful to smooth the way for an intrusion. “Isabella and Edgar Linton talked of calling this afternoon,” she said, at the conclusion of a minute’s silence. “As it rains, I hardly expect them; but they may come, and if they do, you run the risk of being scolded for no good.”
“Order Ellen to say you are engaged, Cathy,” he persisted; “don’t turn me out for those pitiful, silly friends of yours! I’m on the point, sometimes, of complaining that they—but I’ll not—”
“That they what?” cried Catherine, gazing at him with a troubled countenance. “Oh, Nelly!” she added petulantly, jerking her head away from my hands, “you’ve combed my hair quite out of curl! That’s enough; let me alone. What are you on the point of complaining about, Heathcliff?”
“Nothing—only look at the almanack on that wall;” he pointed to a framed sheet hanging near the window, and continued, “The crosses are for the evenings you have spent with the Lintons, the dots for those spent with me. Do you see? I’ve marked every day.”
“Yes—very foolish: as if I took notice!” replied Catherine, in a peevish tone. “And where is the sense of that?”
“To show that I do take notice,” said Heathcliff.
“And should I always be sitting with you?” she demanded, growing more irritated. “What good do I get? What do you talk about? You might be dumb, or a baby, for anything you say to amuse me, or for anything you do, either!”
“You never told me before that I talked too little, or that you disliked my company, Cathy!” exclaimed Heathcliff, in much agitation.
“It’s no company at all, when people know nothing and say nothing,” she muttered.
Her companion rose up, but he hadn’t time to express his feelings further, for a horse’s feet were heard on the flags, and having knocked gently, young Linton entered, his face brilliant with delight at the unexpected summons he had received. Doubtless Catherine marked the difference between her friends, as one came in and the other went out. The contrast resembled what you see in exchanging a bleak, hilly, coal country for a beautiful fertile valley; and his voice and greeting were as opposite as his aspect. He had a sweet, low manner of speaking, and pronounced his words as you do: that’s less gruff than we talk here, and softer.
“I’m not come too soon, am I?” he said, casting a look at me: I had begun to wipe the plate, and tidy some drawers at the far end in the dresser.
“No,” answered Catherine. “What are you doing there, Nelly?”
“My work, Miss,” I replied. (Mr. Hindley had given me directions to make a third party in any private visits Linton chose to pay.)
She stepped behind me and whispered crossly, “Take yourself and your dusters off; when company are in the house, servants don’t commence scouring and cleaning in the room where they are!”
“It’s a good opportunity, now that master is away,” I answered aloud: “he hates me to be fidgeting over these things in his presence. I’m sure Mr. Edgar will excuse me.”
“I hate you to be fidgeting in my presence,” exclaimed the young lady imperiously, not allowing her guest time to speak: she had failed to recover her equanimity since the little dispute with Heathcliff.
“I’m sorry for it, Miss Catherine,” was my response; and I proceeded assiduously with my occupation.
She, supposing Edgar could not see her, snatched the cloth from my hand, and pinched me, with a prolonged wrench, very spitefully on the arm. I’ve said I did not love her, and rather relished mortifying her vanity now and then: besides, she hurt me extremely; so I started up from my knees, and screamed out, “Oh, Miss, that’s a nasty trick! You have no right to nip me, and I’m not going to bear it.”
“I didn’t touch you, you lying creature!” cried she, her fingers tingling to repeat the act, and her ears red with rage. She never had power to conceal her passion, it always set her whole complexion in a blaze.
“What’s that, then?” I retorted, showing a decided purple witness to refute her.
She stamped her foot, wavered a moment, and then, irresistibly impelled by the naughty spirit within her, slapped me on the cheek: a stinging blow that filled both eyes with water.
“Catherine, love! Catherine!” interposed Linton, greatly shocked at the double fault of falsehood and violence which his idol had committed.
“Leave the room, Ellen!” she repeated, trembling all over.
Little Hareton, who followed me everywhere, and was sitting near me on the floor, at seeing my tears commenced crying himself, and sobbed out complaints against “wicked aunt Cathy,” which drew her fury on to his unlucky head: she seized his shoulders, and shook him till the poor child waxed livid, and Edgar thoughtlessly laid hold of her hands to deliver him. In an instant one was wrung free, and the astonished young man felt it applied over his own ear in a way that could not be mistaken for jest. He drew back in consternation. I lifted Hareton in my arms, and walked off to the kitchen with him, leaving the door of communication open, for I was curious to watch how they would settle their disagreement. The insulted visitor moved to the spot where he had laid his hat, pale and with a quivering lip.
“That’s right!” I said to myself. “Take warning and begone! It’s a kindness to let you have a glimpse of her genuine disposition.”
“Where are you going?” demanded Catherine, advancing to the door.
He swerved aside, and attempted to pass.
“You must not go!” she exclaimed, energetically.
“I must and shall!” he replied in a subdued voice.
“No,” she persisted, grasping the handle; “not yet, Edgar Linton: sit down; you shall not leave me in that temper. I should be miserable all night, and I won’t be miserable for you!”
“Can I stay after you have struck me?” asked Linton.
Catherine was mute.
“You’ve made me afraid and ashamed of you,” he continued; “I’ll not come here again!”
Her eyes began to glisten and her lids to twinkle.
“And you told a deliberate untruth!” he said.
“I didn’t!” she cried, recovering her speech; “I did nothing deliberately. Well, go, if you please—get away! And now I’ll cry—I’ll cry myself sick!”
She dropped down on her knees by a chair, and set to weeping in serious earnest. Edgar persevered in his resolution as far as the court; there he lingered. I resolved to encourage him.
“Miss is dreadfully wayward, sir,” I called out. “As bad as any marred child: you’d better be riding home, or else she will be sick, only to grieve us.”
The soft thing looked askance through the window: he possessed the power to depart as much as a cat possesses the power to leave a mouse half killed, or a bird half eaten. Ah, I thought, there will be no saving him: he’s doomed, and flies to his fate! And so it was: he turned abruptly, hastened into the house again, shut the door behind him; and when I went in a while after to inform them that Earnshaw had come home rabid drunk, ready to pull the whole place about our ears (his ordinary frame of mind in that condition), I saw the quarrel had merely effected a closer intimacy—had broken the outworks of youthful timidity, and enabled them to forsake the disguise of friendship, and confess themselves lovers.
Intelligence of Mr. Hindley’s arrival drove Linton speedily to his horse, and Catherine to her chamber. I went to hide little Hareton, and to take the shot out of the master’s fowling-piece, which he was fond of playing with in his insane excitement, to the hazard of the lives of any who provoked, or even attracted his notice too much; and I had hit upon the plan of removing it, that he might do less mischief if he did go the length of firing the gun.
CHAPTER IX
He entered, vociferating oaths dreadful to hear; and caught me in the act of stowing his son away in the kitchen cupboard. Hareton was impressed with a wholesome terror of encountering either his wild beast’s fondness or his madman’s rage; for in one he ran a chance of being squeezed and kissed to death, and in the other of being flung into the fire, or dashed against the wall; and the poor thing remained perfectly quiet wherever I chose to put him.
“There, I’ve found it out at last!” cried Hindley, pulling me back by the skin of my neck, like a dog. “By heaven and hell, you’ve sworn between you to murder that child! I know how it is, now, that he is always out of my way. But, with the help of Satan, I shall make you swallow the carving-knife, Nelly! You needn’t laugh; for I’ve just crammed Kenneth, head-downmost, in the Black-horse marsh; and two is the same as one—and I want to kill some of you: I shall have no rest till I do!”
“But I don’t like the carving-knife, Mr. Hindley,” I answered; “it has been cutting red herrings. I’d rather be shot, if you please.”
“You’d rather be damned!” he said; “and so you shall. No law in England can hinder a man from keeping his house decent, and mine’s abominable! Open your mouth.”
He held the knife in his hand, and pushed its point between my teeth: but, for my part, I was never much afraid of his vagaries. I spat out, and affirmed it tasted detestably—I would not take it on any account.
“Oh!” said he, releasing me, “I see that hideous little villain is not Hareton: I beg your pardon, Nell. If it be, he deserves flaying alive for not running to welcome me, and for screaming as if I were a goblin. Unnatural cub, come hither! I’ll teach thee to impose on a good-hearted, deluded father. Now, don’t you think the lad would be handsomer cropped? It makes a dog fiercer, and I love something fierce—get me a scissors—something fierce and trim! Besides, it’s infernal affectation—devilish conceit it is, to cherish our ears—we’re asses enough without them. Hush, child, hush! Well then, it is my darling! wisht, dry thy eyes—there’s a joy; kiss me. What! it won’t? Kiss me, Hareton! Damn thee, kiss me! By God, as if I would rear such a monster! As sure as I’m living, I’ll break the brat’s neck.”
Poor Hareton was squalling and kicking in his father’s arms with all his might, and redoubled his yells when he carried him upstairs and lifted him over the banister. I cried out that he would frighten the child into fits, and ran to rescue him. As I reached them, Hindley leant forward on the rails to listen to a noise below; almost forgetting what he had in his hands. “Who is that?” he asked, hearing some one approaching the stairs’-foot. I leant forward also, for the purpose of signing to Heathcliff, whose step I recognised, not to come further; and, at the instant when my eye quitted Hareton, he gave a sudden spring, delivered himself from the careless grasp that held him, and fell.
There was scarcely time to experience a thrill of horror before we saw that the little wretch was safe. Heathcliff arrived underneath just at the critical moment; by a natural impulse he arrested his descent, and setting him on his feet, looked up to discover the author of the accident. A miser who has parted with a lucky lottery ticket for five shillings, and finds next day he has lost in the bargain five thousand pounds, could not show a blanker countenance than he did on beholding the figure of Mr. Earnshaw above. It expressed, plainer than words could do, the intensest anguish at having made himself the instrument of thwarting his own revenge. Had it been dark, I daresay he would have tried to remedy the mistake by smashing Hareton’s skull on the steps; but, we witnessed his salvation; and I was presently below with my precious charge pressed to my heart. Hindley descended more leisurely, sobered and abashed.
“It is your fault, Ellen,” he said; “you should have kept him out of sight: you should have taken him from me! Is he injured anywhere?”
“Injured!” I cried angrily; “if he is not killed, he’ll be an idiot! Oh! I wonder his mother does not rise from her grave to see how you use him. You’re worse than a heathen—treating your own flesh and blood in that manner!”
He attempted to touch the child, who, on finding himself with me, sobbed off his terror directly. At the first finger his father laid on him, however, he shrieked again louder than before, and struggled as if he would go into convulsions.
“You shall not meddle with him!” I continued. “He hates you—they all hate you—that’s the truth! A happy family you have; and a pretty state you’re come to!”
“I shall come to a prettier, yet, Nelly,” laughed the misguided man, recovering his hardness. “At present, convey yourself and him away. And hark you, Heathcliff! clear you too quite from my reach and hearing. I wouldn’t murder you to-night; unless, perhaps, I set the house on fire: but that’s as my fancy goes.”
While saying this he took a pint bottle of brandy from the dresser, and poured some into a tumbler.
“Nay, don’t!” I entreated. “Mr. Hindley, do take warning. Have mercy on this unfortunate boy, if you care nothing for yourself!”
“Any one will do better for him than I shall,” he answered.
“Have mercy on your own soul!” I said, endeavouring to snatch the glass from his hand.
“Not I! On the contrary, I shall have great pleasure in sending it to perdition to punish its Maker,” exclaimed the blasphemer. “Here’s to its hearty damnation!”
He drank the spirits and impatiently bade us go; terminating his command with a sequel of horrid imprecations too bad to repeat or remember.
“It’s a pity he cannot kill himself with drink,” observed Heathcliff, muttering an echo of curses back when the door was shut. “He’s doing his very utmost; but his constitution defies him. Mr. Kenneth says he would wager his mare that he’ll outlive any man on this side Gimmerton, and go to the grave a hoary sinner; unless some happy chance out of the common course befall him.”
I went into the kitchen, and sat down to lull my little lamb to sleep. Heathcliff, as I thought, walked through to the barn. It turned out afterwards that he only got as far as the other side the settle, when he flung himself on a bench by the wall, removed from the fire, and remained silent.
I was rocking Hareton on my knee, and humming a song that began,—
It was far in the night, and the bairnies grat, The mither beneath the mools heard that,
when Miss Cathy, who had listened to the hubbub from her room, put her head in, and whispered,—“Are you alone, Nelly?”
“Yes, Miss,” I replied.
She entered and approached the hearth. I, supposing she was going to say something, looked up. The expression of her face seemed disturbed and anxious. Her lips were half asunder, as if she meant to speak, and she drew a breath; but it escaped in a sigh instead of a sentence. I resumed my song; not having forgotten her recent behaviour.
“Where’s Heathcliff?” she said, interrupting me.
“About his work in the stable,” was my answer.
He did not contradict me; perhaps he had fallen into a doze. There followed another long pause, during which I perceived a drop or two trickle from Catherine’s cheek to the flags. Is she sorry for her shameful conduct?—I asked myself. That will be a novelty: but she may come to the point as she will—I sha’n’t help her! No, she felt small trouble regarding any subject, save her own concerns.
“Oh, dear!” she cried at last. “I’m very unhappy!”
“A pity,” observed I. “You’re hard to please; so many friends and so few cares, and can’t make yourself content!”
“Nelly, will you keep a secret for me?” she pursued, kneeling down by me, and lifting her winsome eyes to my face with that sort of look which turns off bad temper, even when one has all the right in the world to indulge it.
“Is it worth keeping?” I inquired, less sulkily.
“Yes, and it worries me, and I must let it out! I want to know what I should do. To-day, Edgar Linton has asked me to marry him, and I’ve given him an answer. Now, before I tell you whether it was a consent or denial, you tell me which it ought to have been.”
“Really, Miss Catherine, how can I know?” I replied. “To be sure, considering the exhibition you performed in his presence this afternoon, I might say it would be wise to refuse him: since he asked you after that, he must either be hopelessly stupid or a venturesome fool.”
“If you talk so, I won’t tell you any more,” she returned, peevishly rising to her feet. “I accepted him, Nelly. Be quick, and say whether I was wrong!”
“You accepted him! Then what good is it discussing the matter? You have pledged your word, and cannot retract.”
“But say whether I should have done so—do!” she exclaimed in an irritated tone; chafing her hands together, and frowning.
“There are many things to be considered before that question can be answered properly,” I said, sententiously. “First and foremost, do you love Mr. Edgar?”
“Who can help it? Of course I do,” she answered.
Then I put her through the following catechism: for a girl of twenty-two it was not injudicious.
“Why do you love him, Miss Cathy?”
“Nonsense, I do—that’s sufficient.”
“By no means; you must say why?”
“Well, because he is handsome, and pleasant to be with.”
“Bad!” was my commentary.
“And because he is young and cheerful.”
“Bad, still.”
“And because he loves me.”
“Indifferent, coming there.”
“And he will be rich, and I shall like to be the greatest woman of the neighbourhood, and I shall be proud of having such a husband.”
“Worst of all. And now, say how you love him?”
“As everybody loves—You’re silly, Nelly.”
“Not at all—Answer.”
“I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches, and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions, and him entirely and altogether. There now!”
“And why?”
“Nay; you are making a jest of it: it is exceedingly ill-natured! It’s no jest to me!” said the young lady, scowling, and turning her face to the fire.
“I’m very far from jesting, Miss Catherine,” I replied. “You love Mr. Edgar because he is handsome, and young, and cheerful, and rich, and loves you. The last, however, goes for nothing: you would love him without that, probably; and with it you wouldn’t, unless he possessed the four former attractions.”
“No, to be sure not: I should only pity him—hate him, perhaps, if he were ugly, and a clown.”
“But there are several other handsome, rich young men in the world: handsomer, possibly, and richer than he is. What should hinder you from loving them?”
“If there be any, they are out of my way: I’ve seen none like Edgar.”
“You may see some; and he won’t always be handsome, and young, and may not always be rich.”
“He is now; and I have only to do with the present. I wish you would speak rationally.”
“Well, that settles it: if you have only to do with the present, marry Mr. Linton.”
“I don’t want your permission for that—I shall marry him: and yet you have not told me whether I’m right.”
“Perfectly right; if people be right to marry only for the present. And now, let us hear what you are unhappy about. Your brother will be pleased; the old lady and gentleman will not object, I think; you will escape from a disorderly, comfortless home into a wealthy, respectable one; and you love Edgar, and Edgar loves you. All seems smooth and easy: where is the obstacle?”
“Here! and here!” replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast: “in whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I’m convinced I’m wrong!”
“That’s very strange! I cannot make it out.”
“It’s my secret. But if you will not mock at me, I’ll explain it: I can’t do it distinctly; but I’ll give you a feeling of how I feel.”
She seated herself by me again: her countenance grew sadder and graver, and her clasped hands trembled.
“Nelly, do you never dream queer dreams?” she said, suddenly, after some minutes’ reflection.
“Yes, now and then,” I answered.
“And so do I. I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. And this is one: I’m going to tell it—but take care not to smile at any part of it.”
“Oh! don’t, Miss Catherine!” I cried. “We’re dismal enough without conjuring up ghosts and visions to perplex us. Come, come, be merry and like yourself! Look at little Hareton! he’s dreaming nothing dreary. How sweetly he smiles in his sleep!”
“Yes; and how sweetly his father curses in his solitude! You remember him, I daresay, when he was just such another as that chubby thing: nearly as young and innocent. However, Nelly, I shall oblige you to listen: it’s not long; and I’ve no power to be merry to-night.”
“I won’t hear it, I won’t hear it!” I repeated, hastily.
I was superstitious about dreams then, and am still; and Catherine had an unusual gloom in her aspect, that made me dread something from which I might shape a prophecy, and foresee a fearful catastrophe. She was vexed, but she did not proceed. Apparently taking up another subject, she recommenced in a short time.
“If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.”
“Because you are not fit to go there,” I answered. “All sinners would be miserable in heaven.”
“But it is not for that. I dreamt once that I was there.”
“I tell you I won’t hearken to your dreams, Miss Catherine! I’ll go to bed,” I interrupted again.
She laughed, and held me down; for I made a motion to leave my chair.
“This is nothing,” cried she: “I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”
Ere this speech ended I became sensible of Heathcliff’s presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out noiselessly. He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no further. My companion, sitting on the ground, was prevented by the back of the settle from remarking his presence or departure; but I started, and bade her hush!
“Why?” she asked, gazing nervously round.
“Joseph is here,” I answered, catching opportunely the roll of his cartwheels up the road; “and Heathcliff will come in with him. I’m not sure whether he were not at the door this moment.”
“Oh, he couldn’t overhear me at the door!” said she. “Give me Hareton, while you get the supper, and when it is ready ask me to sup with you. I want to cheat my uncomfortable conscience, and be convinced that Heathcliff has no notion of these things. He has not, has he? He does not know what being in love is!”
“I see no reason that he should not know, as well as you,” I returned; “and if you are his choice, he’ll be the most unfortunate creature that ever was born! As soon as you become Mrs. Linton, he loses friend, and love, and all! Have you considered how you’ll bear the separation, and how he’ll bear to be quite deserted in the world? Because, Miss Catherine—”
“He quite deserted! we separated!” she exclaimed, with an accent of indignation. “Who is to separate us, pray? They’ll meet the fate of Milo! Not as long as I live, Ellen: for no mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff. Oh, that’s not what I intend—that’s not what I mean! I shouldn’t be Mrs. Linton were such a price demanded! He’ll be as much to me as he has been all his lifetime. Edgar must shake off his antipathy, and tolerate him, at least. He will, when he learns my true feelings towards him. Nelly, I see now you think me a selfish wretch; but did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars? whereas, if I marry Linton I can aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of my brother’s power.”
“With your husband’s money, Miss Catherine?” I asked. “You’ll find him not so pliable as you calculate upon: and, though I’m hardly a judge, I think that’s the worst motive you’ve given yet for being the wife of young Linton.”
“It is not,” retorted she; “it is the best! The others were the satisfaction of my whims: and for Edgar’s sake, too, to satisfy him. This is for the sake of one who comprehends in his person my feelings to Edgar and myself. I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don’t talk of our separation again: it is impracticable; and—”
She paused, and hid her face in the folds of my gown; but I jerked it forcibly away. I was out of patience with her folly!
“If I can make any sense of your nonsense, Miss,” I said, “it only goes to convince me that you are ignorant of the duties you undertake in marrying; or else that you are a wicked, unprincipled girl. But trouble me with no more secrets: I’ll not promise to keep them.”
“You’ll keep that?” she asked, eagerly.
“No, I’ll not promise,” I repeated.
She was about to insist, when the entrance of Joseph finished our conversation; and Catherine removed her seat to a corner, and nursed Hareton, while I made the supper. After it was cooked, my fellow-servant and I began to quarrel who should carry some to Mr. Hindley; and we didn’t settle it till all was nearly cold. Then we came to the agreement that we would let him ask, if he wanted any; for we feared particularly to go into his presence when he had been some time alone.
“And how isn’t that nowt comed in fro’ th’ field, be this time? What is he about? girt idle seeght!” demanded the old man, looking round for Heathcliff.
“I’ll call him,” I replied. “He’s in the barn, I’ve no doubt.”
I went and called, but got no answer. On returning, I whispered to Catherine that he had heard a good part of what she said, I was sure; and told how I saw him quit the kitchen just as she complained of her brother’s conduct regarding him. She jumped up in a fine fright, flung Hareton on to the settle, and ran to seek for her friend herself; not taking leisure to consider why she was so flurried, or how her talk would have affected him. She was absent such a while that Joseph proposed we should wait no longer. He cunningly conjectured they were staying away in order to avoid hearing his protracted blessing. They were “ill eneugh for ony fahl manners,” he affirmed. And on their behalf he added that night a special prayer to the usual quarter-of-an-hour’s supplication before meat, and would have tacked another to the end of the grace, had not his young mistress broken in upon him with a hurried command that he must run down the road, and, wherever Heathcliff had rambled, find and make him re-enter directly!
“I want to speak to him, and I must, before I go upstairs,” she said. “And the gate is open: he is somewhere out of hearing; for he would not reply, though I shouted at the top of the fold as loud as I could.”
Joseph objected at first; she was too much in earnest, however, to suffer contradiction; and at last he placed his hat on his head, and walked grumbling forth. Meantime, Catherine paced up and down the floor, exclaiming—“I wonder where he is—I wonder where he can be! What did I say, Nelly? I’ve forgotten. Was he vexed at my bad humour this afternoon? Dear! tell me what I’ve said to grieve him? I do wish he’d come. I do wish he would!”
“What a noise for nothing!” I cried, though rather uneasy myself. “What a trifle scares you! It’s surely no great cause of alarm that Heathcliff should take a moonlight saunter on the moors, or even lie too sulky to speak to us in the hay-loft. I’ll engage he’s lurking there. See if I don’t ferret him out!”
I departed to renew my search; its result was disappointment, and Joseph’s quest ended in the same.
“Yon lad gets war und war!” observed he on re-entering. “He’s left th’ gate at t’ full swing, and Miss’s pony has trodden dahn two rigs o’ corn, and plottered through, raight o’er into t’ meadow! Hahsomdiver, t’ maister ’ull play t’ devil to-morn, and he’ll do weel. He’s patience itsseln wi’ sich careless, offald craters—patience itsseln he is! Bud he’ll not be soa allus—yah’s see, all on ye! Yah mun’n’t drive him out of his heead for nowt!”
“Have you found Heathcliff, you ass?” interrupted Catherine. “Have you been looking for him, as I ordered?”
“I sud more likker look for th’ horse,” he replied. “It ’ud be to more sense. Bud I can look for norther horse nur man of a neeght loike this—as black as t’ chimbley! und Heathcliff’s noan t’ chap to coom at my whistle—happen he’ll be less hard o’ hearing wi’ ye!”
It was a very dark evening for summer: the clouds appeared inclined to thunder, and I said we had better all sit down; the approaching rain would be certain to bring him home without further trouble. However, Catherine would not be persuaded into tranquillity. She kept wandering to and fro, from the gate to the door, in a state of agitation which permitted no repose; and at length took up a permanent situation on one side of the wall, near the road: where, heedless of my expostulations and the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her, she remained, calling at intervals, and then listening, and then crying outright. She beat Hareton, or any child, at a good passionate fit of crying.
About midnight, while we still sat up, the storm came rattling over the Heights in full fury. There was a violent wind, as well as thunder, and either one or the other split a tree off at the corner of the building: a huge bough fell across the roof, and knocked down a portion of the east chimney-stack, sending a clatter of stones and soot into the kitchen-fire. We thought a bolt had fallen in the middle of us; and Joseph swung on to his knees, beseeching the Lord to remember the patriarchs Noah and Lot, and, as in former times, spare the righteous, though he smote the ungodly. I felt some sentiment that it must be a judgment on us also. The Jonah, in my mind, was Mr. Earnshaw; and I shook the handle of his den that I might ascertain if he were yet living. He replied audibly enough, in a fashion which made my companion vociferate, more clamorously than before, that a wide distinction might be drawn between saints like himself and sinners like his master. But the uproar passed away in twenty minutes, leaving us all unharmed; excepting Cathy, who got thoroughly drenched for her obstinacy in refusing to take shelter, and standing bonnetless and shawlless to catch as much water as she could with her hair and clothes. She came in and lay down on the settle, all soaked as she was, turning her face to the back, and putting her hands before it.
“Well, Miss!” I exclaimed, touching her shoulder; “you are not bent on getting your death, are you? Do you know what o’clock it is? Half-past twelve. Come, come to bed! there’s no use waiting any longer on that foolish boy: he’ll be gone to Gimmerton, and he’ll stay there now. He guesses we shouldn’t wait for him till this late hour: at least, he guesses that only Mr. Hindley would be up; and he’d rather avoid having the door opened by the master.”
“Nay, nay, he’s noan at Gimmerton,” said Joseph. “I’s niver wonder but he’s at t’ bothom of a bog-hoile. This visitation worn’t for nowt, and I wod hev’ ye to look out, Miss—yah muh be t’ next. Thank Hivin for all! All warks togither for gooid to them as is chozzen, and piked out fro’ th’ rubbidge! Yah knaw whet t’ Scripture ses.” And he began quoting several texts, referring us to chapters and verses where we might find them.
I, having vainly begged the wilful girl to rise and remove her wet things, left him preaching and her shivering, and betook myself to bed with little Hareton, who slept as fast as if everyone had been sleeping round him. I heard Joseph read on a while afterwards; then I distinguished his slow step on the ladder, and then I dropped asleep.
Coming down somewhat later than usual, I saw, by the sunbeams piercing the chinks of the shutters, Miss Catherine still seated near the fireplace. The house-door was ajar, too; light entered from its unclosed windows; Hindley had come out, and stood on the kitchen hearth, haggard and drowsy.
“What ails you, Cathy?” he was saying when I entered: “you look as dismal as a drowned whelp. Why are you so damp and pale, child?”
“I’ve been wet,” she answered reluctantly, “and I’m cold, that’s all.”
“Oh, she is naughty!” I cried, perceiving the master to be tolerably sober. “She got steeped in the shower of yesterday evening, and there she has sat the night through, and I couldn’t prevail on her to stir.”
Mr. Earnshaw stared at us in surprise. “The night through,” he repeated. “What kept her up? not fear of the thunder, surely? That was over hours since.”
Neither of us wished to mention Heathcliff’s absence, as long as we could conceal it; so I replied, I didn’t know how she took it into her head to sit up; and she said nothing. The morning was fresh and cool; I threw back the lattice, and presently the room filled with sweet scents from the garden; but Catherine called peevishly to me, “Ellen, shut the window. I’m starving!” And her teeth chattered as she shrank closer to the almost extinguished embers.
“She’s ill,” said Hindley, taking her wrist; “I suppose that’s the reason she would not go to bed. Damn it! I don’t want to be troubled with more sickness here. What took you into the rain?”
“Running after t’ lads, as usuald!” croaked Joseph, catching an opportunity from our hesitation to thrust in his evil tongue. “If I war yah, maister, I’d just slam t’ boards i’ their faces all on ’em, gentle and simple! Never a day ut yah’re off, but yon cat o’ Linton comes sneaking hither; and Miss Nelly, shoo’s a fine lass! shoo sits watching for ye i’ t’ kitchen; and as yah’re in at one door, he’s out at t’other; and, then, wer grand lady goes a-courting of her side! It’s bonny behaviour, lurking amang t’ fields, after twelve o’ t’ night, wi’ that fahl, flaysome divil of a gipsy, Heathcliff! They think I’m blind; but I’m noan: nowt ut t’ soart!—I seed young Linton boath coming and going, and I seed yah” (directing his discourse to me), “yah gooid fur nowt, slattenly witch! nip up and bolt into th’ house, t’ minute yah heard t’ maister’s horse-fit clatter up t’ road.”
“Silence, eavesdropper!” cried Catherine; “none of your insolence before me! Edgar Linton came yesterday by chance, Hindley; and it was I who told him to be off: because I knew you would not like to have met him as you were.”
“You lie, Cathy, no doubt,” answered her brother, “and you are a confounded simpleton! But never mind Linton at present: tell me, were you not with Heathcliff last night? Speak the truth, now. You need not be afraid of harming him: though I hate him as much as ever, he did me a good turn a short time since that will make my conscience tender of breaking his neck. To prevent it, I shall send him about his business this very morning; and after he’s gone, I’d advise you all to look sharp: I shall only have the more humour for you.”
“I never saw Heathcliff last night,” answered Catherine, beginning to sob bitterly: “and if you do turn him out of doors, I’ll go with him. But, perhaps, you’ll never have an opportunity: perhaps, he’s gone.” Here she burst into uncontrollable grief, and the remainder of her words were inarticulate.
Hindley lavished on her a torrent of scornful abuse, and bade her get to her room immediately, or she shouldn’t cry for nothing! I obliged her to obey; and I shall never forget what a scene she acted when we reached her chamber: it terrified me. I thought she was going mad, and I begged Joseph to run for the doctor. It proved the commencement of delirium: Mr. Kenneth, as soon as he saw her, pronounced her dangerously ill; she had a fever. He bled her, and he told me to let her live on whey and water-gruel, and take care she did not throw herself downstairs or out of the window; and then he left: for he had enough to do in the parish, where two or three miles was the ordinary distance between cottage and cottage.
Though I cannot say I made a gentle nurse, and Joseph and the master were no better, and though our patient was as wearisome and headstrong as a patient could be, she weathered it through. Old Mrs. Linton paid us several visits, to be sure, and set things to rights, and scolded and ordered us all; and when Catherine was convalescent, she insisted on conveying her to Thrushcross Grange: for which deliverance we were very grateful. But the poor dame had reason to repent of her kindness: she and her husband both took the fever, and died within a few days of each other.
Our young lady returned to us saucier and more passionate, and haughtier than ever. Heathcliff had never been heard of since the evening of the thunder-storm; and, one day, I had the misfortune, when she had provoked me exceedingly, to lay the blame of his disappearance on her: where indeed it belonged, as she well knew. From that period, for several months, she ceased to hold any communication with me, save in the relation of a mere servant. Joseph fell under a ban also: he would speak his mind, and lecture her all the same as if she were a little girl; and she esteemed herself a woman, and our mistress, and thought that her recent illness gave her a claim to be treated with consideration. Then the doctor had said that she would not bear crossing much; she ought to have her own way; and it was nothing less than murder in her eyes for any one to presume to stand up and contradict her. From Mr. Earnshaw and his companions she kept aloof; and tutored by Kenneth, and serious threats of a fit that often attended her rages, her brother allowed her whatever she pleased to demand, and generally avoided aggravating her fiery temper. He was rather too indulgent in humouring her caprices; not from affection, but from pride: he wished earnestly to see her bring honour to the family by an alliance with the Lintons, and as long as she let him alone she might trample on us like slaves, for aught he cared! Edgar Linton, as multitudes have been before and will be after him, was infatuated: and believed himself the happiest man alive on the day he led her to Gimmerton Chapel, three years subsequent to his father’s death.
Much against my inclination, I was persuaded to leave Wuthering Heights and accompany her here. Little Hareton was nearly five years old, and I had just begun to teach him his letters. We made a sad parting; but Catherine’s tears were more powerful than ours. When I refused to go, and when she found her entreaties did not move me, she went lamenting to her husband and brother. The former offered me munificent wages; the latter ordered me to pack up: he wanted no women in the house, he said, now that there was no mistress; and as to Hareton, the curate should take him in hand, by-and-by. And so I had but one choice left: to do as I was ordered. I told the master he got rid of all decent people only to run to ruin a little faster; I kissed Hareton, said good-by; and since then he has been a stranger: and it’s very queer to think it, but I’ve no doubt he has completely forgotten all about Ellen Dean, and that he was ever more than all the world to her and she to him!
* * * * *
At this point of the housekeeper’s story she chanced to glance towards the time-piece over the chimney; and was in amazement on seeing the minute-hand measure half-past one. She would not hear of staying a second longer: in truth, I felt rather disposed to defer the sequel of her narrative myself. And now that she is vanished to her rest, and I have meditated for another hour or two, I shall summon courage to go also, in spite of aching laziness of head and limbs.
CHAPTER X
A charming introduction to a hermit’s life! Four weeks’ torture, tossing, and sickness! Oh, these bleak winds and bitter northern skies, and impassable roads, and dilatory country surgeons! And oh, this dearth of the human physiognomy! and, worse than all, the terrible intimation of Kenneth that I need not expect to be out of doors till spring!
Mr. Heathcliff has just honoured me with a call. About seven days ago he sent me a brace of grouse—the last of the season. Scoundrel! He is not altogether guiltless in this illness of mine; and that I had a great mind to tell him. But, alas! how could I offend a man who was charitable enough to sit at my bedside a good hour, and talk on some other subject than pills and draughts, blisters and leeches? This is quite an easy interval. I am too weak to read; yet I feel as if I could enjoy something interesting. Why not have up Mrs. Dean to finish her tale? I can recollect its chief incidents, as far as she had gone. Yes: I remember her hero had run off, and never been heard of for three years; and the heroine was married. I’ll ring: she’ll be delighted to find me capable of talking cheerfully. Mrs. Dean came.
“It wants twenty minutes, sir, to taking the medicine,” she commenced.
“Away, away with it!” I replied; “I desire to have—”
“The doctor says you must drop the powders.”
“With all my heart! Don’t interrupt me. Come and take your seat here. Keep your fingers from that bitter phalanx of vials. Draw your knitting out of your pocket—that will do—now continue the history of Mr. Heathcliff, from where you left off, to the present day. Did he finish his education on the Continent, and come back a gentleman? or did he get a sizar’s place at college, or escape to America, and earn honours by drawing blood from his foster-country? or make a fortune more promptly on the English highways?”
“He may have done a little in all these vocations, Mr. Lockwood; but I couldn’t give my word for any. I stated before that I didn’t know how he gained his money; neither am I aware of the means he took to raise his mind from the savage ignorance into which it was sunk: but, with your leave, I’ll proceed in my own fashion, if you think it will amuse and not weary you. Are you feeling better this morning?”
“Much.”
“That’s good news.”
* * * * *
I got Miss Catherine and myself to Thrushcross Grange; and, to my agreeable disappointment, she behaved infinitely better than I dared to expect. She seemed almost over-fond of Mr. Linton; and even to his sister she showed plenty of affection. They were both very attentive to her comfort, certainly. It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn. There were no mutual concessions: one stood erect, and the others yielded: and who can be ill-natured and bad-tempered when they encounter neither opposition nor indifference? I observed that Mr. Edgar had a deep-rooted fear of ruffling her humour. He concealed it from her; but if ever he heard me answer sharply, or saw any other servant grow cloudy at some imperious order of hers, he would show his trouble by a frown of displeasure that never darkened on his own account. He many a time spoke sternly to me about my pertness; and averred that the stab of a knife could not inflict a worse pang than he suffered at seeing his lady vexed. Not to grieve a kind master, I learned to be less touchy; and, for the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it. Catherine had seasons of gloom and silence now and then: they were respected with sympathising silence by her husband, who ascribed them to an alteration in her constitution, produced by her perilous illness; as she was never subject to depression of spirits before. The return of sunshine was welcomed by answering sunshine from him. I believe I may assert that they were really in possession of deep and growing happiness.
It ended. Well, we must be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering; and it ended when circumstances caused each to feel that the one’s interest was not the chief consideration in the other’s thoughts. On a mellow evening in September, I was coming from the garden with a heavy basket of apples which I had been gathering. It had got dusk, and the moon looked over the high wall of the court, causing undefined shadows to lurk in the corners of the numerous projecting portions of the building. I set my burden on the house-steps by the kitchen-door, and lingered to rest, and drew in a few more breaths of the soft, sweet air; my eyes were on the moon, and my back to the entrance, when I heard a voice behind me say,—“Nelly, is that you?”
It was a deep voice, and foreign in tone; yet there was something in the manner of pronouncing my name which made it sound familiar. I turned about to discover who spoke, fearfully; for the doors were shut, and I had seen nobody on approaching the steps. Something stirred in the porch; and, moving nearer, I distinguished a tall man dressed in dark clothes, with dark face and hair. He leant against the side, and held his fingers on the latch as if intending to open for himself. “Who can it be?” I thought. “Mr. Earnshaw? Oh, no! The voice has no resemblance to his.”
“I have waited here an hour,” he resumed, while I continued staring; “and the whole of that time all round has been as still as death. I dared not enter. You do not know me? Look, I’m not a stranger!”
A ray fell on his features; the cheeks were sallow, and half covered with black whiskers; the brows lowering, the eyes deep-set and singular. I remembered the eyes.
“What!” I cried, uncertain whether to regard him as a worldly visitor, and I raised my hands in amazement. “What! you come back? Is it really you? Is it?”
“Yes, Heathcliff,” he replied, glancing from me up to the windows, which reflected a score of glittering moons, but showed no lights from within. “Are they at home? where is she? Nelly, you are not glad! you needn’t be so disturbed. Is she here? Speak! I want to have one word with her—your mistress. Go, and say some person from Gimmerton desires to see her.”
“How will she take it?” I exclaimed. “What will she do? The surprise bewilders me—it will put her out of her head! And you are Heathcliff! But altered! Nay, there’s no comprehending it. Have you been for a soldier?”
“Go and carry my message,” he interrupted, impatiently. “I’m in hell till you do!”
He lifted the latch, and I entered; but when I got to the parlour where Mr. and Mrs. Linton were, I could not persuade myself to proceed. At length I resolved on making an excuse to ask if they would have the candles lighted, and I opened the door.
They sat together in a window whose lattice lay back against the wall, and displayed, beyond the garden trees, and the wild green park, the valley of Gimmerton, with a long line of mist winding nearly to its top (for very soon after you pass the chapel, as you may have noticed, the sough that runs from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen). Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour; but our old house was invisible; it rather dips down on the other side. Both the room and its occupants, and the scene they gazed on, looked wondrously peaceful. I shrank reluctantly from performing my errand; and was actually going away leaving it unsaid, after having put my question about the candles, when a sense of my folly compelled me to return, and mutter, “A person from Gimmerton wishes to see you ma’am.”
“What does he want?” asked Mrs. Linton.
“I did not question him,” I answered.
“Well, close the curtains, Nelly,” she said; “and bring up tea. I’ll be back again directly.”
She quitted the apartment; Mr. Edgar inquired, carelessly, who it was.
“Some one mistress does not expect,” I replied. “That Heathcliff—you recollect him, sir—who used to live at Mr. Earnshaw’s.”
“What! the gipsy—the ploughboy?” he cried. “Why did you not say so to Catherine?”
“Hush! you must not call him by those names, master,” I said. “She’d be sadly grieved to hear you. She was nearly heartbroken when he ran off. I guess his return will make a jubilee to her.”
Mr. Linton walked to a window on the other side of the room that overlooked the court. He unfastened it, and leant out. I suppose they were below, for he exclaimed quickly: “Don’t stand there, love! Bring the person in, if it be anyone particular.” Ere long, I heard the click of the latch, and Catherine flew upstairs, breathless and wild; too excited to show gladness: indeed, by her face, you would rather have surmised an awful calamity.
“Oh, Edgar, Edgar!” she panted, flinging her arms round his neck. “Oh, Edgar darling! Heathcliff’s come back—he is!” And she tightened her embrace to a squeeze.
“Well, well,” cried her husband, crossly, “don’t strangle me for that! He never struck me as such a marvellous treasure. There is no need to be frantic!”
“I know you didn’t like him,” she answered, repressing a little the intensity of her delight. “Yet, for my sake, you must be friends now. Shall I tell him to come up?”
“Here,” he said, “into the parlour?”
“Where else?” she asked.
He looked vexed, and suggested the kitchen as a more suitable place for him. Mrs. Linton eyed him with a droll expression—half angry, half laughing at his fastidiousness.
“No,” she added, after a while; “I cannot sit in the kitchen. Set two tables here, Ellen: one for your master and Miss Isabella, being gentry; the other for Heathcliff and myself, being of the lower orders. Will that please you, dear? Or must I have a fire lighted elsewhere? If so, give directions. I’ll run down and secure my guest. I’m afraid the joy is too great to be real!”
She was about to dart off again; but Edgar arrested her.
“You bid him step up,” he said, addressing me; “and, Catherine, try to be glad, without being absurd. The whole household need not witness the sight of your welcoming a runaway servant as a brother.”
I descended, and found Heathcliff waiting under the porch, evidently anticipating an invitation to enter. He followed my guidance without waste of words, and I ushered him into the presence of the master and mistress, whose flushed cheeks betrayed signs of warm talking. But the lady’s glowed with another feeling when her friend appeared at the door: she sprang forward, took both his hands, and led him to Linton; and then she seized Linton’s reluctant fingers and crushed them into his. Now, fully revealed by the fire and candlelight, I was amazed, more than ever, to behold the transformation of Heathcliff. He had grown a tall, athletic, well-formed man; beside whom my master seemed quite slender and youth-like. His upright carriage suggested the idea of his having been in the army. His countenance was much older in expression and decision of feature than Mr. Linton’s; it looked intelligent, and retained no marks of former degradation. A half-civilised ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified: quite divested of roughness, though too stern for grace. My master’s surprise equalled or exceeded mine: he remained for a minute at a loss how to address the ploughboy, as he had called him. Heathcliff dropped his slight hand, and stood looking at him coolly till he chose to speak.
“Sit down, sir,” he said, at length. “Mrs. Linton, recalling old times, would have me give you a cordial reception; and, of course, I am gratified when anything occurs to please her.”
“And I also,” answered Heathcliff, “especially if it be anything in which I have a part. I shall stay an hour or two willingly.”
He took a seat opposite Catherine, who kept her gaze fixed on him as if she feared he would vanish were she to remove it. He did not raise his to her often: a quick glance now and then sufficed; but it flashed back, each time more confidently, the undisguised delight he drank from hers. They were too much absorbed in their mutual joy to suffer embarrassment. Not so Mr. Edgar: he grew pale with pure annoyance: a feeling that reached its climax when his lady rose, and stepping across the rug, seized Heathcliff’s hands again, and laughed like one beside herself.
“I shall think it a dream to-morrow!” she cried. “I shall not be able to believe that I have seen, and touched, and spoken to you once more. And yet, cruel Heathcliff! you don’t deserve this welcome. To be absent and silent for three years, and never to think of me!”
“A little more than you have thought of me,” he murmured. “I heard of your marriage, Cathy, not long since; and, while waiting in the yard below, I meditated this plan—just to have one glimpse of your face, a stare of surprise, perhaps, and pretended pleasure; afterwards settle my score with Hindley; and then prevent the law by doing execution on myself. Your welcome has put these ideas out of my mind; but beware of meeting me with another aspect next time! Nay, you’ll not drive me off again. You were really sorry for me, were you? Well, there was cause. I’ve fought through a bitter life since I last heard your voice; and you must forgive me, for I struggled only for you!”
“Catherine, unless we are to have cold tea, please to come to the table,” interrupted Linton, striving to preserve his ordinary tone, and a due measure of politeness. “Mr. Heathcliff will have a long walk, wherever he may lodge to-night; and I’m thirsty.”
She took her post before the urn; and Miss Isabella came, summoned by the bell; then, having handed their chairs forward, I left the room. The meal hardly endured ten minutes. Catherine’s cup was never filled: she could neither eat nor drink. Edgar had made a slop in his saucer, and scarcely swallowed a mouthful. Their guest did not protract his stay that evening above an hour longer. I asked, as he departed, if he went to Gimmerton?
“No, to Wuthering Heights,” he answered: “Mr. Earnshaw invited me, when I called this morning.”
Mr. Earnshaw invited him! and he called on Mr. Earnshaw! I pondered this sentence painfully, after he was gone. Is he turning out a bit of a hypocrite, and coming into the country to work mischief under a cloak? I mused: I had a presentiment in the bottom of my heart that he had better have remained away.
About the middle of the night, I was wakened from my first nap by Mrs. Linton gliding into my chamber, taking a seat on my bedside, and pulling me by the hair to rouse me.
“I cannot rest, Ellen,” she said, by way of apology. “And I want some living creature to keep me company in my happiness! Edgar is sulky, because I’m glad of a thing that does not interest him: he refuses to open his mouth, except to utter pettish, silly speeches; and he affirmed I was cruel and selfish for wishing to talk when he was so sick and sleepy. He always contrives to be sick at the least cross! I gave a few sentences of commendation to Heathcliff, and he, either for a headache or a pang of envy, began to cry: so I got up and left him.”
“What use is it praising Heathcliff to him?” I answered. “As lads they had an aversion to each other, and Heathcliff would hate just as much to hear him praised: it’s human nature. Let Mr. Linton alone about him, unless you would like an open quarrel between them.”
“But does it not show great weakness?” pursued she. “I’m not envious: I never feel hurt at the brightness of Isabella’s yellow hair and the whiteness of her skin, at her dainty elegance, and the fondness all the family exhibit for her. Even you, Nelly, if we have a dispute sometimes, you back Isabella at once; and I yield like a foolish mother: I call her a darling, and flatter her into a good temper. It pleases her brother to see us cordial, and that pleases me. But they are very much alike: they are spoiled children, and fancy the world was made for their accommodation; and though I humour both, I think a smart chastisement might improve them all the same.”
“You’re mistaken, Mrs. Linton,” said I. “They humour you: I know what there would be to do if they did not. You can well afford to indulge their passing whims as long as their business is to anticipate all your desires. You may, however, fall out, at last, over something of equal consequence to both sides; and then those you term weak are very capable of being as obstinate as you.”
“And then we shall fight to the death, sha’n’t we, Nelly?” she returned, laughing. “No! I tell you, I have such faith in Linton’s love, that I believe I might kill him, and he wouldn’t wish to retaliate.”
I advised her to value him the more for his affection.
“I do,” she answered, “but he needn’t resort to whining for trifles. It is childish; and, instead of melting into tears because I said that Heathcliff was now worthy of anyone’s regard, and it would honour the first gentleman in the country to be his friend, he ought to have said it for me, and been delighted from sympathy. He must get accustomed to him, and he may as well like him: considering how Heathcliff has reason to object to him, I’m sure he behaved excellently!”
“What do you think of his going to Wuthering Heights?” I inquired. “He is reformed in every respect, apparently: quite a Christian: offering the right hand of fellowship to his enemies all around!”
“He explained it,” she replied. “I wonder as much as you. He said he called to gather information concerning me from you, supposing you resided there still; and Joseph told Hindley, who came out and fell to questioning him of what he had been doing, and how he had been living; and finally, desired him to walk in. There were some persons sitting at cards; Heathcliff joined them; my brother lost some money to him, and, finding him plentifully supplied, he requested that he would come again in the evening: to which he consented. Hindley is too reckless to select his acquaintance prudently: he doesn’t trouble himself to reflect on the causes he might have for mistrusting one whom he has basely injured. But Heathcliff affirms his principal reason for resuming a connection with his ancient persecutor is a wish to install himself in quarters at walking distance from the Grange, and an attachment to the house where we lived together; and likewise a hope that I shall have more opportunities of seeing him there than I could have if he settled in Gimmerton. He means to offer liberal payment for permission to lodge at the Heights; and doubtless my brother’s covetousness will prompt him to accept the terms: he was always greedy; though what he grasps with one hand he flings away with the other.”
“It’s a nice place for a young man to fix his dwelling in!” said I. “Have you no fear of the consequences, Mrs. Linton?”
“None for my friend,” she replied: “his strong head will keep him from danger; a little for Hindley: but he can’t be made morally worse than he is; and I stand between him and bodily harm. The event of this evening has reconciled me to God and humanity! I had risen in angry rebellion against Providence. Oh, I’ve endured very, very bitter misery, Nelly! If that creature knew how bitter, he’d be ashamed to cloud its removal with idle petulance. It was kindness for him which induced me to bear it alone: had I expressed the agony I frequently felt, he would have been taught to long for its alleviation as ardently as I. However, it’s over, and I’ll take no revenge on his folly; I can afford to suffer anything hereafter! Should the meanest thing alive slap me on the cheek, I’d not only turn the other, but I’d ask pardon for provoking it; and, as a proof, I’ll go make my peace with Edgar instantly. Good-night! I’m an angel!”
In this self-complacent conviction she departed; and the success of her fulfilled resolution was obvious on the morrow: Mr. Linton had not only abjured his peevishness (though his spirits seemed still subdued by Catherine’s exuberance of vivacity), but he ventured no objection to her taking Isabella with her to Wuthering Heights in the afternoon; and she rewarded him with such a summer of sweetness and affection in return as made the house a paradise for several days; both master and servants profiting from the perpetual sunshine.
Heathcliff—Mr. Heathcliff I should say in future—used the liberty of visiting at Thrushcross Grange cautiously, at first: he seemed estimating how far its owner would bear his intrusion. Catherine, also, deemed it judicious to moderate her expressions of pleasure in receiving him; and he gradually established his right to be expected. He retained a great deal of the reserve for which his boyhood was remarkable; and that served to repress all startling demonstrations of feeling. My master’s uneasiness experienced a lull, and further circumstances diverted it into another channel for a space.
His new source of trouble sprang from the not anticipated misfortune of Isabella Linton evincing a sudden and irresistible attraction towards the tolerated guest. She was at that time a charming young lady of eighteen; infantile in manners, though possessed of keen wit, keen feelings, and a keen temper, too, if irritated. Her brother, who loved her tenderly, was appalled at this fantastic preference. Leaving aside the degradation of an alliance with a nameless man, and the possible fact that his property, in default of heirs male, might pass into such a one’s power, he had sense to comprehend Heathcliff’s disposition: to know that, though his exterior was altered, his mind was unchangeable and unchanged. And he dreaded that mind: it revolted him: he shrank forebodingly from the idea of committing Isabella to its keeping. He would have recoiled still more had he been aware that her attachment rose unsolicited, and was bestowed where it awakened no reciprocation of sentiment; for the minute he discovered its existence he laid the blame on Heathcliff’s deliberate designing.
We had all remarked, during some time, that Miss Linton fretted and pined over something. She grew cross and wearisome; snapping at and teasing Catherine continually, at the imminent risk of exhausting her limited patience. We excused her, to a certain extent, on the plea of ill-health: she was dwindling and fading before our eyes. But one day, when she had been peculiarly wayward, rejecting her breakfast, complaining that the servants did not do what she told them; that the mistress would allow her to be nothing in the house, and Edgar neglected her; that she had caught a cold with the doors being left open, and we let the parlour fire go out on purpose to vex her, with a hundred yet more frivolous accusations, Mrs. Linton peremptorily insisted that she should get to bed; and, having scolded her heartily, threatened to send for the doctor. Mention of Kenneth caused her to exclaim, instantly, that her health was perfect, and it was only Catherine’s harshness which made her unhappy.
“How can you say I am harsh, you naughty fondling?” cried the mistress, amazed at the unreasonable assertion. “You are surely losing your reason. When have I been harsh, tell me?”
“Yesterday,” sobbed Isabella, “and now!”
“Yesterday!” said her sister-in-law. “On what occasion?”
“In our walk along the moor: you told me to ramble where I pleased, while you sauntered on with Mr. Heathcliff!”
“And that’s your notion of harshness?” said Catherine, laughing. “It was no hint that your company was superfluous; we didn’t care whether you kept with us or not; I merely thought Heathcliff’s talk would have nothing entertaining for your ears.”
“Oh, no,” wept the young lady; “you wished me away, because you knew I liked to be there!”
“Is she sane?” asked Mrs. Linton, appealing to me. “I’ll repeat our conversation, word for word, Isabella; and you point out any charm it could have had for you.”
“I don’t mind the conversation,” she answered: “I wanted to be with—”
“Well?” said Catherine, perceiving her hesitate to complete the sentence.
“With him: and I won’t be always sent off!” she continued, kindling up. “You are a dog in the manger, Cathy, and desire no one to be loved but yourself!”
“You are an impertinent little monkey!” exclaimed Mrs. Linton, in surprise. “But I’ll not believe this idiocy! It is impossible that you can covet the admiration of Heathcliff—that you consider him an agreeable person! I hope I have misunderstood you, Isabella?”
“No, you have not,” said the infatuated girl. “I love him more than ever you loved Edgar, and he might love me, if you would let him!”
“I wouldn’t be you for a kingdom, then!” Catherine declared, emphatically: and she seemed to speak sincerely. “Nelly, help me to convince her of her madness. Tell her what Heathcliff is: an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation; an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone. I’d as soon put that little canary into the park on a winter’s day, as recommend you to bestow your heart on him! It is deplorable ignorance of his character, child, and nothing else, which makes that dream enter your head. Pray, don’t imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He’s not a rough diamond—a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man. I never say to him, ‘Let this or that enemy alone, because it would be ungenerous or cruel to harm them;’ I say, ‘Let them alone, because I should hate them to be wronged:’ and he’d crush you like a sparrow’s egg, Isabella, if he found you a troublesome charge. I know he couldn’t love a Linton; and yet he’d be quite capable of marrying your fortune and expectations: avarice is growing with him a besetting sin. There’s my picture: and I’m his friend—so much so, that had he thought seriously to catch you, I should, perhaps, have held my tongue, and let you fall into his trap.”
Miss Linton regarded her sister-in-law with indignation.
“For shame! for shame!” she repeated, angrily. “You are worse than twenty foes, you poisonous friend!”
“Ah! you won’t believe me, then?” said Catherine. “You think I speak from wicked selfishness?”
“I’m certain you do,” retorted Isabella; “and I shudder at you!”
“Good!” cried the other. “Try for yourself, if that be your spirit: I have done, and yield the argument to your saucy insolence.”—
“And I must suffer for her egotism!” she sobbed, as Mrs. Linton left the room. “All, all is against me: she has blighted my single consolation. But she uttered falsehoods, didn’t she? Mr. Heathcliff is not a fiend: he has an honourable soul, and a true one, or how could he remember her?”
“Banish him from your thoughts, Miss,” I said. “He’s a bird of bad omen: no mate for you. Mrs. Linton spoke strongly, and yet I can’t contradict her. She is better acquainted with his heart than I, or any one besides; and she never would represent him as worse than he is. Honest people don’t hide their deeds. How has he been living? how has he got rich? why is he staying at Wuthering Heights, the house of a man whom he abhors? They say Mr. Earnshaw is worse and worse since he came. They sit up all night together continually, and Hindley has been borrowing money on his land, and does nothing but play and drink: I heard only a week ago—it was Joseph who told me—I met him at Gimmerton: ‘Nelly,’ he said, ‘we’s hae a crowner’s ’quest enow, at ahr folks’. One on ’em ’s a’most getten his finger cut off wi’ hauding t’ other fro’ stickin’ hisseln loike a cawlf. That’s maister, yah knaw, ’at ’s soa up o’ going tuh t’ grand ’sizes. He’s noan feared o’ t’ bench o’ judges, norther Paul, nur Peter, nur John, nur Matthew, nor noan on ’em, not he! He fair likes—he langs to set his brazened face agean ’em! And yon bonny lad Heathcliff, yah mind, he’s a rare ’un. He can girn a laugh as well ’s onybody at a raight divil’s jest. Does he niver say nowt of his fine living amang us, when he goes to t’ Grange? This is t’ way on ’t:—up at sun-down: dice, brandy, cloised shutters, und can’le-light till next day at noon: then, t’ fooil gangs banning un raving to his cham’er, makking dacent fowks dig thur fingers i’ thur lugs fur varry shame; un’ the knave, why he can caint his brass, un’ ate, un’ sleep, un’ off to his neighbour’s to gossip wi’ t’ wife. I’ course, he tells Dame Catherine how her fathur’s goold runs into his pocket, and her fathur’s son gallops down t’ broad road, while he flees afore to oppen t’ pikes!’ Now, Miss Linton, Joseph is an old rascal, but no liar; and, if his account of Heathcliff’s conduct be true, you would never think of desiring such a husband, would you?”
“You are leagued with the rest, Ellen!” she replied. “I’ll not listen to your slanders. What malevolence you must have to wish to convince me that there is no happiness in the world!”
Whether she would have got over this fancy if left to herself, or persevered in nursing it perpetually, I cannot say: she had little time to reflect. The day after, there was a justice-meeting at the next town; my master was obliged to attend; and Mr. Heathcliff, aware of his absence, called rather earlier than usual. Catherine and Isabella were sitting in the library, on hostile terms, but silent: the latter alarmed at her recent indiscretion, and the disclosure she had made of her secret feelings in a transient fit of passion; the former, on mature consideration, really offended with her companion; and, if she laughed again at her pertness, inclined to make it no laughing matter to her. She did laugh as she saw Heathcliff pass the window. I was sweeping the hearth, and I noticed a mischievous smile on her lips. Isabella, absorbed in her meditations, or a book, remained till the door opened; and it was too late to attempt an escape, which she would gladly have done had it been practicable.
“Come in, that’s right!” exclaimed the mistress, gaily, pulling a chair to the fire. “Here are two people sadly in need of a third to thaw the ice between them; and you are the very one we should both of us choose. Heathcliff, I’m proud to show you, at last, somebody that dotes on you more than myself. I expect you to feel flattered. Nay, it’s not Nelly; don’t look at her! My poor little sister-in-law is breaking her heart by mere contemplation of your physical and moral beauty. It lies in your own power to be Edgar’s brother! No, no, Isabella, you sha’n’t run off,” she continued, arresting, with feigned playfulness, the confounded girl, who had risen indignantly. “We were quarrelling like cats about you, Heathcliff; and I was fairly beaten in protestations of devotion and admiration: and, moreover, I was informed that if I would but have the manners to stand aside, my rival, as she will have herself to be, would shoot a shaft into your soul that would fix you for ever, and send my image into eternal oblivion!”
“Catherine!” said Isabella, calling up her dignity, and disdaining to struggle from the tight grasp that held her, “I’d thank you to adhere to the truth and not slander me, even in joke! Mr. Heathcliff, be kind enough to bid this friend of yours release me: she forgets that you and I are not intimate acquaintances; and what amuses her is painful to me beyond expression.”
As the guest answered nothing, but took his seat, and looked thoroughly indifferent what sentiments she cherished concerning him, she turned and whispered an earnest appeal for liberty to her tormentor.
“By no means!” cried Mrs. Linton in answer. “I won’t be named a dog in the manger again. You shall stay: now then! Heathcliff, why don’t you evince satisfaction at my pleasant news? Isabella swears that the love Edgar has for me is nothing to that she entertains for you. I’m sure she made some speech of the kind; did she not, Ellen? And she has fasted ever since the day before yesterday’s walk, from sorrow and rage that I despatched her out of your society under the idea of its being unacceptable.”
“I think you belie her,” said Heathcliff, twisting his chair to face them. “She wishes to be out of my society now, at any rate!”
And he stared hard at the object of discourse, as one might do at a strange repulsive animal: a centipede from the Indies, for instance, which curiosity leads one to examine in spite of the aversion it raises. The poor thing couldn’t bear that; she grew white and red in rapid succession, and, while tears beaded her lashes, bent the strength of her small fingers to loosen the firm clutch of Catherine; and perceiving that as fast as she raised one finger off her arm another closed down, and she could not remove the whole together, she began to make use of her nails; and their sharpness presently ornamented the detainer’s with crescents of red.
“There’s a tigress!” exclaimed Mrs. Linton, setting her free, and shaking her hand with pain. “Begone, for God’s sake, and hide your vixen face! How foolish to reveal those talons to him. Can’t you fancy the conclusions he’ll draw? Look, Heathcliff! they are instruments that will do execution—you must beware of your eyes.”
“I’d wrench them off her fingers, if they ever menaced me,” he answered, brutally, when the door had closed after her. “But what did you mean by teasing the creature in that manner, Cathy? You were not speaking the truth, were you?”
“I assure you I was,” she returned. “She has been dying for your sake several weeks, and raving about you this morning, and pouring forth a deluge of abuse, because I represented your failings in a plain light, for the purpose of mitigating her adoration. But don’t notice it further: I wished to punish her sauciness, that’s all. I like her too well, my dear Heathcliff, to let you absolutely seize and devour her up.”
“And I like her too ill to attempt it,” said he, “except in a very ghoulish fashion. You’d hear of odd things if I lived alone with that mawkish, waxen face: the most ordinary would be painting on its white the colours of the rainbow, and turning the blue eyes black, every day or two: they detestably resemble Linton’s.”
“Delectably!” observed Catherine. “They are dove’s eyes—angel’s!”
“She’s her brother’s heir, is she not?” he asked, after a brief silence.
“I should be sorry to think so,” returned his companion. “Half a dozen nephews shall erase her title, please heaven! Abstract your mind from the subject at present: you are too prone to covet your neighbour’s goods; remember this neighbour’s goods are mine.”
“If they were mine, they would be none the less that,” said Heathcliff; “but though Isabella Linton may be silly, she is scarcely mad; and, in short, we’ll dismiss the matter, as you advise.”
From their tongues they did dismiss it; and Catherine, probably, from her thoughts. The other, I felt certain, recalled it often in the course of the evening. I saw him smile to himself—grin rather—and lapse into ominous musing whenever Mrs. Linton had occasion to be absent from the apartment.
I determined to watch his movements. My heart invariably cleaved to the master’s, in preference to Catherine’s side: with reason I imagined, for he was kind, and trustful, and honourable; and she—she could not be called the opposite, yet she seemed to allow herself such wide latitude, that I had little faith in her principles, and still less sympathy for her feelings. I wanted something to happen which might have the effect of freeing both Wuthering Heights and the Grange of Mr. Heathcliff, quietly; leaving us as we had been prior to his advent. His visits were a continual nightmare to me; and, I suspected, to my master also. His abode at the Heights was an oppression past explaining. I felt that God had forsaken the stray sheep there to its own wicked wanderings, and an evil beast prowled between it and the fold, waiting his time to spring and destroy.
CHAPTER XI
Sometimes, while meditating on these things in solitude, I’ve got up in a sudden terror, and put on my bonnet to go see how all was at the farm. I’ve persuaded my conscience that it was a duty to warn him how people talked regarding his ways; and then I’ve recollected his confirmed bad habits, and, hopeless of benefiting him, have flinched from re-entering the dismal house, doubting if I could bear to be taken at my word.
One time I passed the old gate, going out of my way, on a journey to Gimmerton. It was about the period that my narrative has reached: a bright frosty afternoon; the ground bare, and the road hard and dry. I came to a stone where the highway branches off on to the moor at your left hand; a rough sand-pillar, with the letters W. H. cut on its north side, on the east, G., and on the south-west, T. G. It serves as a guide-post to the Grange, the Heights, and village. The sun shone yellow on its grey head, reminding me of summer; and I cannot say why, but all at once a gush of child’s sensations flowed into my heart. Hindley and I held it a favourite spot twenty years before. I gazed long at the weather-worn block; and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles, which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things; and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf: his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate. “Poor Hindley!” I exclaimed, involuntarily. I started: my bodily eye was cheated into a momentary belief that the child lifted its face and stared straight into mine! It vanished in a twinkling; but immediately I felt an irresistible yearning to be at the Heights. Superstition urged me to comply with this impulse: supposing he should be dead! I thought—or should die soon!—supposing it were a sign of death! The nearer I got to the house the more agitated I grew; and on catching sight of it I trembled in every limb. The apparition had outstripped me: it stood looking through the gate. That was my first idea on observing an elf-locked, brown-eyed boy setting his ruddy countenance against the bars. Further reflection suggested this must be Hareton, my Hareton, not altered greatly since I left him, ten months since.
“God bless thee, darling!” I cried, forgetting instantaneously my foolish fears. “Hareton, it’s Nelly! Nelly, thy nurse.”
He retreated out of arm’s length, and picked up a large flint.
“I am come to see thy father, Hareton,” I added, guessing from the action that Nelly, if she lived in his memory at all, was not recognised as one with me.
He raised his missile to hurl it; I commenced a soothing speech, but could not stay his hand: the stone struck my bonnet; and then ensued, from the stammering lips of the little fellow, a string of curses, which, whether he comprehended them or not, were delivered with practised emphasis, and distorted his baby features into a shocking expression of malignity. You may be certain this grieved more than angered me. Fit to cry, I took an orange from my pocket, and offered it to propitiate him. He hesitated, and then snatched it from my hold; as if he fancied I only intended to tempt and disappoint him. I showed another, keeping it out of his reach.
“Who has taught you those fine words, my bairn?” I inquired. “The curate?”
“Damn the curate, and thee! Gie me that,” he replied.
“Tell us where you got your lessons, and you shall have it,” said I. “Who’s your master?”
“Devil daddy,” was his answer.
“And what do you learn from daddy?” I continued.
He jumped at the fruit; I raised it higher. “What does he teach you?” I asked.
“Naught,” said he, “but to keep out of his gait. Daddy cannot bide me, because I swear at him.”
“Ah! and the devil teaches you to swear at daddy?” I observed.
“Ay—nay,” he drawled.
“Who, then?”
“Heathcliff.”
“I asked if he liked Mr. Heathcliff.”
“Ay!” he answered again.
Desiring to have his reasons for liking him, I could only gather the sentences—“I known’t: he pays dad back what he gies to me—he curses daddy for cursing me. He says I mun do as I will.”
“And the curate does not teach you to read and write, then?” I pursued.
“No, I was told the curate should have his —— teeth dashed down his —— throat, if he stepped over the threshold—Heathcliff had promised that!”
I put the orange in his hand, and bade him tell his father that a woman called Nelly Dean was waiting to speak with him, by the garden gate. He went up the walk, and entered the house; but, instead of Hindley, Heathcliff appeared on the door-stones; and I turned directly and ran down the road as hard as ever I could race, making no halt till I gained the guide-post, and feeling as scared as if I had raised a goblin. This is not much connected with Miss Isabella’s affair: except that it urged me to resolve further on mounting vigilant guard, and doing my utmost to check the spread of such bad influence at the Grange: even though I should wake a domestic storm, by thwarting Mrs. Linton’s pleasure.
The next time Heathcliff came my young lady chanced to be feeding some pigeons in the court. She had never spoken a word to her sister-in-law for three days; but she had likewise dropped her fretful complaining, and we found it a great comfort. Heathcliff had not the habit of bestowing a single unnecessary civility on Miss Linton, I knew. Now, as soon as he beheld her, his first precaution was to take a sweeping survey of the house-front. I was standing by the kitchen-window, but I drew out of sight. He then stepped across the pavement to her, and said something: she seemed embarrassed, and desirous of getting away; to prevent it, he laid his hand on her arm. She averted her face: he apparently put some question which she had no mind to answer. There was another rapid glance at the house, and supposing himself unseen, the scoundrel had the impudence to embrace her.
“Judas! Traitor!” I ejaculated. “You are a hypocrite, too, are you? A deliberate deceiver.”
“Who is, Nelly?” said Catherine’s voice at my elbow: I had been over-intent on watching the pair outside to mark her entrance.
“Your worthless friend!” I answered, warmly: “the sneaking rascal yonder. Ah, he has caught a glimpse of us—he is coming in! I wonder will he have the heart to find a plausible excuse for making love to Miss, when he told you he hated her?”
Mrs. Linton saw Isabella tear herself free, and run into the garden; and a minute after, Heathcliff opened the door. I couldn’t withhold giving some loose to my indignation; but Catherine angrily insisted on silence, and threatened to order me out of the kitchen, if I dared to be so presumptuous as to put in my insolent tongue.
“To hear you, people might think you were the mistress!” she cried. “You want setting down in your right place! Heathcliff, what are you about, raising this stir? I said you must let Isabella alone!—I beg you will, unless you are tired of being received here, and wish Linton to draw the bolts against you!”
“God forbid that he should try!” answered the black villain. I detested him just then. “God keep him meek and patient! Every day I grow madder after sending him to heaven!”
“Hush!” said Catherine, shutting the inner door. “Don’t vex me. Why have you disregarded my request? Did she come across you on purpose?”
“What is it to you?” he growled. “I have a right to kiss her, if she chooses; and you have no right to object. I am not your husband: you needn’t be jealous of me!”
“I’m not jealous of you,” replied the mistress; “I’m jealous for you. Clear your face: you sha’n’t scowl at me! If you like Isabella, you shall marry her. But do you like her? Tell the truth, Heathcliff! There, you won’t answer. I’m certain you don’t.”
“And would Mr. Linton approve of his sister marrying that man?” I inquired.
“Mr. Linton should approve,” returned my lady, decisively.
“He might spare himself the trouble,” said Heathcliff: “I could do as well without his approbation. And as to you, Catherine, I have a mind to speak a few words now, while we are at it. I want you to be aware that I know you have treated me infernally—infernally! Do you hear? And if you flatter yourself that I don’t perceive it, you are a fool; and if you think I can be consoled by sweet words, you are an idiot: and if you fancy I’ll suffer unrevenged, I’ll convince you of the contrary, in a very little while! Meantime, thank you for telling me your sister-in-law’s secret: I swear I’ll make the most of it. And stand you aside!”
“What new phase of his character is this?” exclaimed Mrs. Linton, in amazement. “I’ve treated you infernally—and you’ll take your revenge! How will you take it, ungrateful brute? How have I treated you infernally?”
“I seek no revenge on you,” replied Heathcliff, less vehemently. “That’s not the plan. The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him; they crush those beneath them. You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style, and refrain from insult as much as you are able. Having levelled my palace, don’t erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home. If I imagined you really wished me to marry Isabel, I’d cut my throat!”
“Oh, the evil is that I am not jealous, is it?” cried Catherine. “Well, I won’t repeat my offer of a wife: it is as bad as offering Satan a lost soul. Your bliss lies, like his, in inflicting misery. You prove it. Edgar is restored from the ill-temper he gave way to at your coming; I begin to be secure and tranquil; and you, restless to know us at peace, appear resolved on exciting a quarrel. Quarrel with Edgar, if you please, Heathcliff, and deceive his sister: you’ll hit on exactly the most efficient method of revenging yourself on me.”
The conversation ceased. Mrs. Linton sat down by the fire, flushed and gloomy. The spirit which served her was growing intractable: she could neither lay nor control it. He stood on the hearth with folded arms, brooding on his evil thoughts; and in this position I left them to seek the master, who was wondering what kept Catherine below so long.
“Ellen,” said he, when I entered, “have you seen your mistress?”
“Yes; she’s in the kitchen, sir,” I answered. “She’s sadly put out by Mr. Heathcliff’s behaviour: and, indeed, I do think it’s time to arrange his visits on another footing. There’s harm in being too soft, and now it’s come to this—.” And I related the scene in the court, and, as near as I dared, the whole subsequent dispute. I fancied it could not be very prejudicial to Mrs. Linton; unless she made it so afterwards, by assuming the defensive for her guest. Edgar Linton had difficulty in hearing me to the close. His first words revealed that he did not clear his wife of blame.
“This is insufferable!” he exclaimed. “It is disgraceful that she should own him for a friend, and force his company on me! Call me two men out of the hall, Ellen. Catherine shall linger no longer to argue with the low ruffian—I have humoured her enough.”
He descended, and bidding the servants wait in the passage, went, followed by me, to the kitchen. Its occupants had recommenced their angry discussion: Mrs. Linton, at least, was scolding with renewed vigour; Heathcliff had moved to the window, and hung his head, somewhat cowed by her violent rating apparently. He saw the master first, and made a hasty motion that she should be silent; which she obeyed, abruptly, on discovering the reason of his intimation.
“How is this?” said Linton, addressing her; “what notion of propriety must you have to remain here, after the language which has been held to you by that blackguard? I suppose, because it is his ordinary talk you think nothing of it: you are habituated to his baseness, and, perhaps, imagine I can get used to it too!”
“Have you been listening at the door, Edgar?” asked the mistress, in a tone particularly calculated to provoke her husband, implying both carelessness and contempt of his irritation. Heathcliff, who had raised his eyes at the former speech, gave a sneering laugh at the latter; on purpose, it seemed, to draw Mr. Linton’s attention to him. He succeeded; but Edgar did not mean to entertain him with any high flights of passion.
“I’ve been so far forbearing with you, sir,” he said quietly; “not that I was ignorant of your miserable, degraded character, but I felt you were only partly responsible for that; and Catherine wishing to keep up your acquaintance, I acquiesced—foolishly. Your presence is a moral poison that would contaminate the most virtuous: for that cause, and to prevent worse consequences, I shall deny you hereafter admission into this house, and give notice now that I require your instant departure. Three minutes’ delay will render it involuntary and ignominious.”
Heathcliff measured the height and breadth of the speaker with an eye full of derision.
“Cathy, this lamb of yours threatens like a bull!” he said. “It is in danger of splitting its skull against my knuckles. By God! Mr. Linton, I’m mortally sorry that you are not worth knocking down!”
My master glanced towards the passage, and signed me to fetch the men: he had no intention of hazarding a personal encounter. I obeyed the hint; but Mrs. Linton, suspecting something, followed; and when I attempted to call them, she pulled me back, slammed the door to, and locked it.
“Fair means!” she said, in answer to her husband’s look of angry surprise. “If you have not courage to attack him, make an apology, or allow yourself to be beaten. It will correct you of feigning more valour than you possess. No, I’ll swallow the key before you shall get it! I’m delightfully rewarded for my kindness to each! After constant indulgence of one’s weak nature, and the other’s bad one, I earn for thanks two samples of blind ingratitude, stupid to absurdity! Edgar, I was defending you and yours; and I wish Heathcliff may flog you sick, for daring to think an evil thought of me!”
It did not need the medium of a flogging to produce that effect on the master. He tried to wrest the key from Catherine’s grasp, and for safety she flung it into the hottest part of the fire; whereupon Mr. Edgar was taken with a nervous trembling, and his countenance grew deadly pale. For his life he could not avert that excess of emotion: mingled anguish and humiliation overcame him completely. He leant on the back of a chair, and covered his face.
“Oh, heavens! In old days this would win you knighthood!” exclaimed Mrs. Linton. “We are vanquished! we are vanquished! Heathcliff would as soon lift a finger at you as the king would march his army against a colony of mice. Cheer up! you sha’n’t be hurt! Your type is not a lamb, it’s a sucking leveret.”
“I wish you joy of the milk-blooded coward, Cathy!” said her friend. “I compliment you on your taste. And that is the slavering, shivering thing you preferred to me! I would not strike him with my fist, but I’d kick him with my foot, and experience considerable satisfaction. Is he weeping, or is he going to faint for fear?”
The fellow approached and gave the chair on which Linton rested a push. He’d better have kept his distance: my master quickly sprang erect, and struck him full on the throat a blow that would have levelled a slighter man. It took his breath for a minute; and while he choked, Mr. Linton walked out by the back door into the yard, and from thence to the front entrance.
“There! you’ve done with coming here,” cried Catherine. “Get away, now; he’ll return with a brace of pistols and half-a-dozen assistants. If he did overhear us, of course he’d never forgive you. You’ve played me an ill turn, Heathcliff! But go—make haste! I’d rather see Edgar at bay than you.”
“Do you suppose I’m going with that blow burning in my gullet?” he thundered. “By hell, no! I’ll crush his ribs in like a rotten hazel-nut before I cross the threshold! If I don’t floor him now, I shall murder him some time; so, as you value his existence, let me get at him!”
“He is not coming,” I interposed, framing a bit of a lie. “There’s the coachman and the two gardeners; you’ll surely not wait to be thrust into the road by them! Each has a bludgeon; and master will, very likely, be watching from the parlour-windows to see that they fulfil his orders.”
The gardeners and coachman were there: but Linton was with them. They had already entered the court. Heathcliff, on the second thoughts, resolved to avoid a struggle against three underlings: he seized the poker, smashed the lock from the inner door, and made his escape as they tramped in.
Mrs. Linton, who was very much excited, bade me accompany her upstairs. She did not know my share in contributing to the disturbance, and I was anxious to keep her in ignorance.
“I’m nearly distracted, Nelly!” she exclaimed, throwing herself on the sofa. “A thousand smiths’ hammers are beating in my head! Tell Isabella to shun me; this uproar is owing to her; and should she or any one else aggravate my anger at present, I shall get wild. And, Nelly, say to Edgar, if you see him again to-night, that I’m in danger of being seriously ill. I wish it may prove true. He has startled and distressed me shockingly! I want to frighten him. Besides, he might come and begin a string of abuse or complainings; I’m certain I should recriminate, and God knows where we should end! Will you do so, my good Nelly? You are aware that I am no way blamable in this matter. What possessed him to turn listener? Heathcliff’s talk was outrageous, after you left us; but I could soon have diverted him from Isabella, and the rest meant nothing. Now all is dashed wrong; by the fool’s craving to hear evil of self, that haunts some people like a demon! Had Edgar never gathered our conversation, he would never have been the worse for it. Really, when he opened on me in that unreasonable tone of displeasure after I had scolded Heathcliff till I was hoarse for him; I did not care hardly what they did to each other; especially as I felt that, however the scene closed, we should all be driven asunder for nobody knows how long! Well, if I cannot keep Heathcliff for my friend—if Edgar will be mean and jealous, I’ll try to break their hearts by breaking my own. That will be a prompt way of finishing all, when I am pushed to extremity! But it’s a deed to be reserved for a forlorn hope; I’d not take Linton by surprise with it. To this point he has been discreet in dreading to provoke me; you must represent the peril of quitting that policy, and remind him of my passionate temper, verging, when kindled, on frenzy. I wish you could dismiss that apathy out of that countenance, and look rather more anxious about me.”
The stolidity with which I received these instructions was, no doubt, rather exasperating: for they were delivered in perfect sincerity; but I believed a person who could plan the turning of her fits of passion to account, beforehand, might, by exerting her will, manage to control herself tolerably, even while under their influence; and I did not wish to “frighten” her husband, as she said, and multiply his annoyances for the purpose of serving her selfishness. Therefore I said nothing when I met the master coming towards the parlour; but I took the liberty of turning back to listen whether they would resume their quarrel together. He began to speak first.
“Remain where you are, Catherine,” he said; without any anger in his voice, but with much sorrowful despondency. “I shall not stay. I am neither come to wrangle nor be reconciled; but I wish just to learn whether, after this evening’s events, you intend to continue your intimacy with—”
“Oh, for mercy’s sake,” interrupted the mistress, stamping her foot, “for mercy’s sake, let us hear no more of it now! Your cold blood cannot be worked into a fever: your veins are full of ice-water; but mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance.”
“To get rid of me, answer my question,” persevered Mr. Linton. “You must answer it; and that violence does not alarm me. I have found that you can be as stoical as anyone, when you please. Will you give up Heathcliff hereafter, or will you give up me? It is impossible for you to be my friend and his at the same time; and I absolutely require to know which you choose.”
“I require to be let alone!” exclaimed Catherine, furiously. “I demand it! Don’t you see I can scarcely stand? Edgar, you—you leave me!”
She rang the bell till it broke with a twang; I entered leisurely. It was enough to try the temper of a saint, such senseless, wicked rages! There she lay dashing her head against the arm of the sofa, and grinding her teeth, so that you might fancy she would crash them to splinters! Mr. Linton stood looking at her in sudden compunction and fear. He told me to fetch some water. She had no breath for speaking. I brought a glass full; and as she would not drink, I sprinkled it on her face. In a few seconds she stretched herself out stiff, and turned up her eyes, while her cheeks, at once blanched and livid, assumed the aspect of death. Linton looked terrified.
“There is nothing in the world the matter,” I whispered. I did not want him to yield, though I could not help being afraid in my heart.
“She has blood on her lips!” he said, shuddering.
“Never mind!” I answered, tartly. And I told him how she had resolved, previous to his coming, on exhibiting a fit of frenzy. I incautiously gave the account aloud, and she heard me; for she started up—her hair flying over her shoulders, her eyes flashing, the muscles of her neck and arms standing out preternaturally. I made up my mind for broken bones, at least; but she only glared about her for an instant, and then rushed from the room. The master directed me to follow; I did, to her chamber-door: she hindered me from going further by securing it against me.
As she never offered to descend to breakfast next morning, I went to ask whether she would have some carried up. “No!” she replied, peremptorily. The same question was repeated at dinner and tea; and again on the morrow after, and received the same answer. Mr. Linton, on his part, spent his time in the library, and did not inquire concerning his wife’s occupations. Isabella and he had had an hour’s interview, during which he tried to elicit from her some sentiment of proper horror for Heathcliff’s advances: but he could make nothing of her evasive replies, and was obliged to close the examination unsatisfactorily; adding, however, a solemn warning, that if she were so insane as to encourage that worthless suitor, it would dissolve all bonds of relationship between herself and him.
CHAPTER XII
While Miss Linton moped about the park and garden, always silent, and almost always in tears; and her brother shut himself up among books that he never opened—wearying, I guessed, with a continual vague expectation that Catherine, repenting her conduct, would come of her own accord to ask pardon, and seek a reconciliation—and she fasted pertinaciously, under the idea, probably, that at every meal Edgar was ready to choke for her absence, and pride alone held him from running to cast himself at her feet; I went about my household duties, convinced that the Grange had but one sensible soul in its walls, and that lodged in my body. I wasted no condolences on Miss, nor any expostulations on my mistress; nor did I pay much attention to the sighs of my master, who yearned to hear his lady’s name, since he might not hear her voice. I determined they should come about as they pleased for me; and though it was a tiresomely slow process, I began to rejoice at length in a faint dawn of its progress: as I thought at first.
Mrs. Linton, on the third day, unbarred her door, and having finished the water in her pitcher and decanter, desired a renewed supply, and a basin of gruel, for she believed she was dying. That I set down as a speech meant for Edgar’s ears; I believed no such thing, so I kept it to myself and brought her some tea and dry toast. She ate and drank eagerly, and sank back on her pillow again, clenching her hands and groaning. “Oh, I will die,” she exclaimed, “since no one cares anything about me. I wish I had not taken that.” Then a good while after I heard her murmur, “No, I’ll not die—he’d be glad—he does not love me at all—he would never miss me!”
“Did you want anything, ma’am?” I inquired, still preserving my external composure, in spite of her ghastly countenance and strange, exaggerated manner.
“What is that apathetic being doing?” she demanded, pushing the thick entangled locks from her wasted face. “Has he fallen into a lethargy, or is he dead?”
“Neither,” replied I; “if you mean Mr. Linton. He’s tolerably well, I think, though his studies occupy him rather more than they ought: he is continually among his books, since he has no other society.”
I should not have spoken so if I had known her true condition, but I could not get rid of the notion that she acted a part of her disorder.
“Among his books!” she cried, confounded. “And I dying! I on the brink of the grave! My God! does he know how I’m altered?” continued she, staring at her reflection in a mirror hanging against the opposite wall. “Is that Catherine Linton? He imagines me in a pet—in play, perhaps. Cannot you inform him that it is frightful earnest? Nelly, if it be not too late, as soon as I learn how he feels, I’ll choose between these two: either to starve at once—that would be no punishment unless he had a heart—or to recover, and leave the country. Are you speaking the truth about him now? Take care. Is he actually so utterly indifferent for my life?”
“Why, ma’am,” I answered, “the master has no idea of your being deranged; and of course he does not fear that you will let yourself die of hunger.”
“You think not? Cannot you tell him I will?” she returned. “Persuade him! speak of your own mind: say you are certain I will!”
“No, you forget, Mrs. Linton,” I suggested, “that you have eaten some food with a relish this evening, and to-morrow you will perceive its good effects.”
“If I were only sure it would kill him,” she interrupted, “I’d kill myself directly! These three awful nights I’ve never closed my lids—and oh, I’ve been tormented! I’ve been haunted, Nelly! But I begin to fancy you don’t like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me. And they have all turned to enemies in a few hours. They have, I’m positive; the people here. How dreary to meet death, surrounded by their cold faces! Isabella, terrified and repelled, afraid to enter the room, it would be so dreadful to watch Catherine go. And Edgar standing solemnly by to see it over; then offering prayers of thanks to God for restoring peace to his house, and going back to his books! What in the name of all that feels has he to do with books, when I am dying?”
She could not bear the notion which I had put into her head of Mr. Linton’s philosophical resignation. Tossing about, she increased her feverish bewilderment to madness, and tore the pillow with her teeth; then raising herself up all burning, desired that I would open the window. We were in the middle of winter, the wind blew strong from the north-east, and I objected. Both the expressions flitting over her face, and the changes of her moods, began to alarm me terribly; and brought to my recollection her former illness, and the doctor’s injunction that she should not be crossed. A minute previously she was violent; now, supported on one arm, and not noticing my refusal to obey her, she seemed to find childish diversion in pulling the feathers from the rents she had just made, and ranging them on the sheet according to their different species: her mind had strayed to other associations.
“That’s a turkey’s,” she murmured to herself; “and this is a wild duck’s; and this is a pigeon’s. Ah, they put pigeons’ feathers in the pillows—no wonder I couldn’t die! Let me take care to throw it on the floor when I lie down. And here is a moor-cock’s; and this—I should know it among a thousand—it’s a lapwing’s. Bonny bird; wheeling over our heads in the middle of the moor. It wanted to get to its nest, for the clouds had touched the swells, and it felt rain coming. This feather was picked up from the heath, the bird was not shot: we saw its nest in the winter, full of little skeletons. Heathcliff set a trap over it, and the old ones dared not come. I made him promise he’d never shoot a lapwing after that, and he didn’t. Yes, here are more! Did he shoot my lapwings, Nelly? Are they red, any of them? Let me look.”
“Give over with that baby-work!” I interrupted, dragging the pillow away, and turning the holes towards the mattress, for she was removing its contents by handfuls. “Lie down and shut your eyes: you’re wandering. There’s a mess! The down is flying about like snow.”
I went here and there collecting it.
“I see in you, Nelly,” she continued dreamily, “an aged woman: you have grey hair and bent shoulders. This bed is the fairy cave under Penistone Crags, and you are gathering elf-bolts to hurt our heifers; pretending, while I am near, that they are only locks of wool. That’s what you’ll come to fifty years hence: I know you are not so now. I’m not wandering: you’re mistaken, or else I should believe you really were that withered hag, and I should think I was under Penistone Crags; and I’m conscious it’s night, and there are two candles on the table making the black press shine like jet.”
“The black press? where is that?” I asked. “You are talking in your sleep!”
“It’s against the wall, as it always is,” she replied. “It does appear odd—I see a face in it!”
“There’s no press in the room, and never was,” said I, resuming my seat, and looping up the curtain that I might watch her.
“Don’t you see that face?” she inquired, gazing earnestly at the mirror.
And say what I could, I was incapable of making her comprehend it to be her own; so I rose and covered it with a shawl.
“It’s behind there still!” she pursued, anxiously. “And it stirred. Who is it? I hope it will not come out when you are gone! Oh! Nelly, the room is haunted! I’m afraid of being alone!”
I took her hand in mine, and bid her be composed; for a succession of shudders convulsed her frame, and she would keep straining her gaze towards the glass.
“There’s nobody here!” I insisted. “It was yourself, Mrs. Linton: you knew it a while since.”
“Myself!” she gasped, “and the clock is striking twelve! It’s true, then! that’s dreadful!”
Her fingers clutched the clothes, and gathered them over her eyes. I attempted to steal to the door with an intention of calling her husband; but I was summoned back by a piercing shriek—the shawl had dropped from the frame.
“Why, what is the matter?” cried I. “Who is coward now? Wake up! That is the glass—the mirror, Mrs. Linton; and you see yourself in it, and there am I too by your side.”
Trembling and bewildered, she held me fast, but the horror gradually passed from her countenance; its paleness gave place to a glow of shame.
“Oh, dear! I thought I was at home,” she sighed. “I thought I was lying in my chamber at Wuthering Heights. Because I’m weak, my brain got confused, and I screamed unconsciously. Don’t say anything; but stay with me. I dread sleeping: my dreams appal me.”
“A sound sleep would do you good, ma’am,” I answered: “and I hope this suffering will prevent your trying starving again.”
“Oh, if I were but in my own bed in the old house!” she went on bitterly, wringing her hands. “And that wind sounding in the firs by the lattice. Do let me feel it—it comes straight down the moor—do let me have one breath!”
To pacify her I held the casement ajar a few seconds. A cold blast rushed through; I closed it, and returned to my post. She lay still now, her face bathed in tears. Exhaustion of body had entirely subdued her spirit: our fiery Catherine was no better than a wailing child.
“How long is it since I shut myself in here?” she asked, suddenly reviving.
“It was Monday evening,” I replied, “and this is Thursday night, or rather Friday morning, at present.”
“What! of the same week?” she exclaimed. “Only that brief time?”
“Long enough to live on nothing but cold water and ill-temper,” observed I.
“Well, it seems a weary number of hours,” she muttered doubtfully: “it must be more. I remember being in the parlour after they had quarrelled, and Edgar being cruelly provoking, and me running into this room desperate. As soon as ever I had barred the door, utter blackness overwhelmed me, and I fell on the floor. I couldn’t explain to Edgar how certain I felt of having a fit, or going raging mad, if he persisted in teasing me! I had no command of tongue, or brain, and he did not guess my agony, perhaps: it barely left me sense to try to escape from him and his voice. Before I recovered sufficiently to see and hear, it began to be dawn, and, Nelly, I’ll tell you what I thought, and what has kept recurring and recurring till I feared for my reason. I thought as I lay there, with my head against that table leg, and my eyes dimly discerning the grey square of the window, that I was enclosed in the oak-panelled bed at home; and my heart ached with some great grief which, just waking, I could not recollect. I pondered, and worried myself to discover what it could be, and, most strangely, the whole last seven years of my life grew a blank! I did not recall that they had been at all. I was a child; my father was just buried, and my misery arose from the separation that Hindley had ordered between me and Heathcliff. I was laid alone, for the first time; and, rousing from a dismal doze after a night of weeping, I lifted my hand to push the panels aside: it struck the table-top! I swept it along the carpet, and then memory burst in: my late anguish was swallowed in a paroxysm of despair. I cannot say why I felt so wildly wretched: it must have been temporary derangement; for there is scarcely cause. But, supposing at twelve years old I had been wrenched from the Heights, and every early association, and my all in all, as Heathcliff was at that time, and been converted at a stroke into Mrs. Linton, the lady of Thrushcross Grange, and the wife of a stranger: an exile, and outcast, thenceforth, from what had been my world. You may fancy a glimpse of the abyss where I grovelled! Shake your head as you will, Nelly, you have helped to unsettle me! You should have spoken to Edgar, indeed you should, and compelled him to leave me quiet! Oh, I’m burning! I wish I were out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills. Open the window again wide: fasten it open! Quick, why don’t you move?”
“Because I won’t give you your death of cold,” I answered.
“You won’t give me a chance of life, you mean,” she said sullenly. “However, I’m not helpless yet; I’ll open it myself.”
And sliding from the bed before I could hinder her, she crossed the room, walking very uncertainly, threw it back, and bent out, careless of the frosty air that cut about her shoulders as keen as a knife. I entreated, and finally attempted to force her to retire. But I soon found her delirious strength much surpassed mine (she was delirious, I became convinced by her subsequent actions and ravings). There was no moon, and everything beneath lay in misty darkness: not a light gleamed from any house, far or near; all had been extinguished long ago: and those at Wuthering Heights were never visible—still she asserted she caught their shining.
“Look!” she cried eagerly, “that’s my room with the candle in it, and the trees swaying before it; and the other candle is in Joseph’s garret. Joseph sits up late, doesn’t he? He’s waiting till I come home that he may lock the gate. Well, he’ll wait a while yet. It’s a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk to go that journey! We’ve braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I’ll keep you. I’ll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won’t rest till you are with me. I never will!”
She paused, and resumed with a strange smile. “He’s considering—he’d rather I’d come to him! Find a way, then! not through that kirkyard. You are slow! Be content, you always followed me!”
Perceiving it vain to argue against her insanity, I was planning how I could reach something to wrap about her, without quitting my hold of herself (for I could not trust her alone by the gaping lattice), when, to my consternation, I heard the rattle of the door-handle, and Mr. Linton entered. He had only then come from the library; and, in passing through the lobby, had noticed our talking and been attracted by curiosity, or fear, to examine what it signified, at that late hour.
“Oh, sir!” I cried, checking the exclamation risen to his lips at the sight which met him, and the bleak atmosphere of the chamber. “My poor mistress is ill, and she quite masters me: I cannot manage her at all; pray, come and persuade her to go to bed. Forget your anger, for she’s hard to guide any way but her own.”
“Catherine ill?” he said, hastening to us. “Shut the window, Ellen! Catherine! why—”
He was silent. The haggardness of Mrs. Linton’s appearance smote him speechless, and he could only glance from her to me in horrified astonishment.
“She’s been fretting here,” I continued, “and eating scarcely anything, and never complaining: she would admit none of us till this evening, and so we couldn’t inform you of her state, as we were not aware of it ourselves; but it is nothing.”
I felt I uttered my explanations awkwardly; the master frowned. “It is nothing, is it, Ellen Dean?” he said sternly. “You shall account more clearly for keeping me ignorant of this!” And he took his wife in his arms, and looked at her with anguish.
At first she gave him no glance of recognition: he was invisible to her abstracted gaze. The delirium was not fixed, however; having weaned her eyes from contemplating the outer darkness, by degrees she centred her attention on him, and discovered who it was that held her.
“Ah! you are come, are you, Edgar Linton?” she said, with angry animation. “You are one of those things that are ever found when least wanted, and when you are wanted, never! I suppose we shall have plenty of lamentations now—I see we shall—but they can’t keep me from my narrow home out yonder: my resting-place, where I’m bound before spring is over! There it is: not among the Lintons, mind, under the chapel-roof, but in the open air, with a head-stone; and you may please yourself whether you go to them or come to me!”
“Catherine, what have you done?” commenced the master. “Am I nothing to you any more? Do you love that wretch Heath—”
“Hush!” cried Mrs. Linton. “Hush, this moment! You mention that name and I end the matter instantly by a spring from the window! What you touch at present you may have; but my soul will be on that hill-top before you lay hands on me again. I don’t want you, Edgar: I’m past wanting you. Return to your books. I’m glad you possess a consolation, for all you had in me is gone.”
“Her mind wanders, sir,” I interposed. “She has been talking nonsense the whole evening; but let her have quiet, and proper attendance, and she’ll rally. Hereafter, we must be cautious how we vex her.”
“I desire no further advice from you,” answered Mr. Linton. “You knew your mistress’s nature, and you encouraged me to harass her. And not to give me one hint of how she has been these three days! It was heartless! Months of sickness could not cause such a change!”
I began to defend myself, thinking it too bad to be blamed for another’s wicked waywardness. “I knew Mrs. Linton’s nature to be headstrong and domineering,” cried I: “but I didn’t know that you wished to foster her fierce temper! I didn’t know that, to humour her, I should wink at Mr. Heathcliff. I performed the duty of a faithful servant in telling you, and I have got a faithful servant’s wages! Well, it will teach me to be careful next time. Next time you may gather intelligence for yourself!”
“The next time you bring a tale to me you shall quit my service, Ellen Dean,” he replied.
“You’d rather hear nothing about it, I suppose, then, Mr. Linton?” said I. “Heathcliff has your permission to come a-courting to Miss, and to drop in at every opportunity your absence offers, on purpose to poison the mistress against you?”
Confused as Catherine was, her wits were alert at applying our conversation.
“Ah! Nelly has played traitor,” she exclaimed, passionately. “Nelly is my hidden enemy. You witch! So you do seek elf-bolts to hurt us! Let me go, and I’ll make her rue! I’ll make her howl a recantation!”
A maniac’s fury kindled under her brows; she struggled desperately to disengage herself from Linton’s arms. I felt no inclination to tarry the event; and, resolving to seek medical aid on my own responsibility, I quitted the chamber.
In passing the garden to reach the road, at a place where a bridle hook is driven into the wall, I saw something white moved irregularly, evidently by another agent than the wind. Notwithstanding my hurry, I stayed to examine it, lest ever after I should have the conviction impressed on my imagination that it was a creature of the other world. My surprise and perplexity were great on discovering, by touch more than vision, Miss Isabella’s springer, Fanny, suspended by a handkerchief, and nearly at its last gasp. I quickly released the animal, and lifted it into the garden. I had seen it follow its mistress upstairs when she went to bed; and wondered much how it could have got out there, and what mischievous person had treated it so. While untying the knot round the hook, it seemed to me that I repeatedly caught the beat of horses’ feet galloping at some distance; but there were such a number of things to occupy my reflections that I hardly gave the circumstance a thought: though it was a strange sound, in that place, at two o’clock in the morning.
Mr. Kenneth was fortunately just issuing from his house to see a patient in the village as I came up the street; and my account of Catherine Linton’s malady induced him to accompany me back immediately. He was a plain rough man; and he made no scruple to speak his doubts of her surviving this second attack; unless she were more submissive to his directions than she had shown herself before.
“Nelly Dean,” said he, “I can’t help fancying there’s an extra cause for this. What has there been to do at the Grange? We’ve odd reports up here. A stout, hearty lass like Catherine does not fall ill for a trifle; and that sort of people should not either. It’s hard work bringing them through fevers, and such things. How did it begin?”
“The master will inform you,” I answered; “but you are acquainted with the Earnshaws’ violent dispositions, and Mrs. Linton caps them all. I may say this; it commenced in a quarrel. She was struck during a tempest of passion with a kind of fit. That’s her account, at least: for she flew off in the height of it, and locked herself up. Afterwards, she refused to eat, and now she alternately raves and remains in a half dream; knowing those about her, but having her mind filled with all sorts of strange ideas and illusions.”
“Mr. Linton will be sorry?” observed Kenneth, interrogatively.
“Sorry? he’ll break his heart should anything happen!” I replied. “Don’t alarm him more than necessary.”
“Well, I told him to beware,” said my companion; “and he must bide the consequences of neglecting my warning! Hasn’t he been intimate with Mr. Heathcliff lately?”
“Heathcliff frequently visits at the Grange,” answered I, “though more on the strength of the mistress having known him when a boy, than because the master likes his company. At present he’s discharged from the trouble of calling; owing to some presumptuous aspirations after Miss Linton which he manifested. I hardly think he’ll be taken in again.”
“And does Miss Linton turn a cold shoulder on him?” was the doctor’s next question.
“I’m not in her confidence,” returned I, reluctant to continue the subject.
“No, she’s a sly one,” he remarked, shaking his head. “She keeps her own counsel! But she’s a real little fool. I have it from good authority that last night (and a pretty night it was!) she and Heathcliff were walking in the plantation at the back of your house above two hours; and he pressed her not to go in again, but just mount his horse and away with him! My informant said she could only put him off by pledging her word of honour to be prepared on their first meeting after that: when it was to be he didn’t hear; but you urge Mr. Linton to look sharp!”
This news filled me with fresh fears; I outstripped Kenneth, and ran most of the way back. The little dog was yelping in the garden yet. I spared a minute to open the gate for it, but instead of going to the house door, it coursed up and down snuffing the grass, and would have escaped to the road, had I not seized it and conveyed it in with me. On ascending to Isabella’s room, my suspicions were confirmed: it was empty. Had I been a few hours sooner Mrs. Linton’s illness might have arrested her rash step. But what could be done now? There was a bare possibility of overtaking them if pursued instantly. I could not pursue them, however; and I dared not rouse the family, and fill the place with confusion; still less unfold the business to my master, absorbed as he was in his present calamity, and having no heart to spare for a second grief! I saw nothing for it but to hold my tongue, and suffer matters to take their course; and Kenneth being arrived, I went with a badly composed countenance to announce him. Catherine lay in a troubled sleep: her husband had succeeded in soothing the excess of frenzy; he now hung over her pillow, watching every shade and every change of her painfully expressive features.
The doctor, on examining the case for himself, spoke hopefully to him of its having a favourable termination, if we could only preserve around her perfect and constant tranquillity. To me, he signified the threatening danger was not so much death, as permanent alienation of intellect.
I did not close my eyes that night, nor did Mr. Linton: indeed, we never went to bed; and the servants were all up long before the usual hour, moving through the house with stealthy tread, and exchanging whispers as they encountered each other in their vocations. Every one was active but Miss Isabella; and they began to remark how sound she slept: her brother, too, asked if she had risen, and seemed impatient for her presence, and hurt that she showed so little anxiety for her sister-in-law. I trembled lest he should send me to call her; but I was spared the pain of being the first proclaimant of her flight. One of the maids, a thoughtless girl, who had been on an early errand to Gimmerton, came panting upstairs, open-mouthed, and dashed into the chamber, crying: “Oh, dear, dear! What mun we have next? Master, master, our young lady—”
“Hold your noise!” cried I hastily, enraged at her clamorous manner.
“Speak lower, Mary—What is the matter?” said Mr. Linton. “What ails your young lady?”
“She’s gone, she’s gone! Yon’ Heathcliff’s run off wi’ her!” gasped the girl.
“That is not true!” exclaimed Linton, rising in agitation. “It cannot be: how has the idea entered your head? Ellen Dean, go and seek her. It is incredible: it cannot be.”
As he spoke he took the servant to the door, and then repeated his demand to know her reasons for such an assertion.
“Why, I met on the road a lad that fetches milk here,” she stammered, “and he asked whether we weren’t in trouble at the Grange. I thought he meant for missis’s sickness, so I answered, yes. Then says he, ‘There’s somebody gone after ’em, I guess?’ I stared. He saw I knew nought about it, and he told how a gentleman and lady had stopped to have a horse’s shoe fastened at a blacksmith’s shop, two miles out of Gimmerton, not very long after midnight! and how the blacksmith’s lass had got up to spy who they were: she knew them both directly. And she noticed the man—Heathcliff it was, she felt certain: nob’dy could mistake him, besides—put a sovereign in her father’s hand for payment. The lady had a cloak about her face; but having desired a sup of water, while she drank it fell back, and she saw her very plain. Heathcliff held both bridles as they rode on, and they set their faces from the village, and went as fast as the rough roads would let them. The lass said nothing to her father, but she told it all over Gimmerton this morning.”
I ran and peeped, for form’s sake, into Isabella’s room; confirming, when I returned, the servant’s statement. Mr. Linton had resumed his seat by the bed; on my re-entrance, he raised his eyes, read the meaning of my blank aspect, and dropped them without giving an order, or uttering a word.
“Are we to try any measures for overtaking and bringing her back,” I inquired. “How should we do?”
“She went of her own accord,” answered the master; “she had a right to go if she pleased. Trouble me no more about her. Hereafter she is only my sister in name: not because I disown her, but because she has disowned me.”
And that was all he said on the subject: he did not make a single inquiry further, or mention her in any way, except directing me to send what property she had in the house to her fresh home, wherever it was, when I knew it.
CHAPTER XIII
For two months the fugitives remained absent; in those two months, Mrs. Linton encountered and conquered the worst shock of what was denominated a brain fever. No mother could have nursed an only child more devotedly than Edgar tended her. Day and night he was watching, and patiently enduring all the annoyances that irritable nerves and a shaken reason could inflict; and, though Kenneth remarked that what he saved from the grave would only recompense his care by forming the source of constant future anxiety—in fact, that his health and strength were being sacrificed to preserve a mere ruin of humanity—he knew no limits in gratitude and joy when Catherine’s life was declared out of danger; and hour after hour he would sit beside her, tracing the gradual return to bodily health, and flattering his too sanguine hopes with the illusion that her mind would settle back to its right balance also, and she would soon be entirely her former self.
The first time she left her chamber was at the commencement of the following March. Mr. Linton had put on her pillow, in the morning, a handful of golden crocuses; her eye, long stranger to any gleam of pleasure, caught them in waking, and shone delighted as she gathered them eagerly together.
“These are the earliest flowers at the Heights,” she exclaimed. “They remind me of soft thaw winds, and warm sunshine, and nearly melted snow. Edgar, is there not a south wind, and is not the snow almost gone?”
“The snow is quite gone down here, darling,” replied her husband; “and I only see two white spots on the whole range of moors: the sky is blue, and the larks are singing, and the becks and brooks are all brim full. Catherine, last spring at this time, I was longing to have you under this roof; now, I wish you were a mile or two up those hills: the air blows so sweetly, I feel that it would cure you.”
“I shall never be there but once more,” said the invalid; “and then you’ll leave me, and I shall remain for ever. Next spring you’ll long again to have me under this roof, and you’ll look back and think you were happy to-day.”
Linton lavished on her the kindest caresses, and tried to cheer her by the fondest words; but, vaguely regarding the flowers, she let the tears collect on her lashes and stream down her cheeks unheeding. We knew she was really better, and, therefore, decided that long confinement to a single place produced much of this despondency, and it might be partially removed by a change of scene. The master told me to light a fire in the many-weeks’ deserted parlour, and to set an easy-chair in the sunshine by the window; and then he brought her down, and she sat a long while enjoying the genial heat, and, as we expected, revived by the objects round her: which, though familiar, were free from the dreary associations investing her hated sick chamber. By evening she seemed greatly exhausted; yet no arguments could persuade her to return to that apartment, and I had to arrange the parlour sofa for her bed, till another room could be prepared. To obviate the fatigue of mounting and descending the stairs, we fitted up this, where you lie at present—on the same floor with the parlour; and she was soon strong enough to move from one to the other, leaning on Edgar’s arm. Ah, I thought myself, she might recover, so waited on as she was. And there was double cause to desire it, for on her existence depended that of another: we cherished the hope that in a little while Mr. Linton’s heart would be gladdened, and his lands secured from a stranger’s gripe, by the birth of an heir.
I should mention that Isabella sent to her brother, some six weeks from her departure, a short note, announcing her marriage with Heathcliff. It appeared dry and cold; but at the bottom was dotted in with pencil an obscure apology, and an entreaty for kind remembrance and reconciliation, if her proceeding had offended him: asserting that she could not help it then, and being done, she had now no power to repeal it. Linton did not reply to this, I believe; and, in a fortnight more, I got a long letter, which I considered odd, coming from the pen of a bride just out of the honeymoon. I’ll read it: for I keep it yet. Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.
* * * * *
DEAR ELLEN, it begins,—I came last night to Wuthering Heights, and heard, for the first time, that Catherine has been, and is yet, very ill. I must not write to her, I suppose, and my brother is either too angry or too distressed to answer what I sent him. Still, I must write to somebody, and the only choice left me is you.
Inform Edgar that I’d give the world to see his face again—that my heart returned to Thrushcross Grange in twenty-four hours after I left it, and is there at this moment, full of warm feelings for him, and Catherine! I can’t follow it though—(these words are underlined)—they need not expect me, and they may draw what conclusions they please; taking care, however, to lay nothing at the door of my weak will or deficient affection.
The remainder of the letter is for yourself alone. I want to ask you two questions: the first is,—How did you contrive to preserve the common sympathies of human nature when you resided here? I cannot recognise any sentiment which those around share with me.
The second question I have great interest in; it is this—Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil? I sha’n’t tell my reasons for making this inquiry; but I beseech you to explain, if you can, what I have married: that is, when you call to see me; and you must call, Ellen, very soon. Don’t write, but come, and bring me something from Edgar.
Now, you shall hear how I have been received in my new home, as I am led to imagine the Heights will be. It is to amuse myself that I dwell on such subjects as the lack of external comforts: they never occupy my thoughts, except at the moment when I miss them. I should laugh and dance for joy, if I found their absence was the total of my miseries, and the rest was an unnatural dream!
The sun set behind the Grange as we turned on to the moors; by that, I judged it to be six o’clock; and my companion halted half an hour, to inspect the park, and the gardens, and, probably, the place itself, as well as he could; so it was dark when we dismounted in the paved yard of the farmhouse, and your old fellow-servant, Joseph, issued out to receive us by the light of a dip candle. He did it with a courtesy that redounded to his credit. His first act was to elevate his torch to a level with my face, squint malignantly, project his under-lip, and turn away. Then he took the two horses, and led them into the stables; reappearing for the purpose of locking the outer gate, as if we lived in an ancient castle.
Heathcliff stayed to speak to him, and I entered the kitchen—a dingy, untidy hole; I daresay you would not know it, it is so changed since it was in your charge. By the fire stood a ruffianly child, strong in limb and dirty in garb, with a look of Catherine in his eyes and about his mouth.
“This is Edgar’s legal nephew,” I reflected—“mine in a manner; I must shake hands, and—yes—I must kiss him. It is right to establish a good understanding at the beginning.”
I approached, and, attempting to take his chubby fist, said—“How do you do, my dear?”
He replied in a jargon I did not comprehend.
“Shall you and I be friends, Hareton?” was my next essay at conversation.
An oath, and a threat to set Throttler on me if I did not “frame off” rewarded my perseverance.
“Hey, Throttler, lad!” whispered the little wretch, rousing a half-bred bull-dog from its lair in a corner. “Now, wilt thou be ganging?” he asked authoritatively.
Love for my life urged a compliance; I stepped over the threshold to wait till the others should enter. Mr. Heathcliff was nowhere visible; and Joseph, whom I followed to the stables, and requested to accompany me in, after staring and muttering to himself, screwed up his nose and replied—“Mim! mim! mim! Did iver Christian body hear aught like it? Mincing un’ munching! How can I tell whet ye say?”
“I say, I wish you to come with me into the house!” I cried, thinking him deaf, yet highly disgusted at his rudeness.
“None o’ me! I getten summut else to do,” he answered, and continued his work; moving his lantern jaws meanwhile, and surveying my dress and countenance (the former a great deal too fine, but the latter, I’m sure, as sad as he could desire) with sovereign contempt.
I walked round the yard, and through a wicket, to another door, at which I took the liberty of knocking, in hopes some more civil servant might show himself. After a short suspense, it was opened by a tall, gaunt man, without neckerchief, and otherwise extremely slovenly; his features were lost in masses of shaggy hair that hung on his shoulders; and his eyes, too, were like a ghostly Catherine’s with all their beauty annihilated.
“What’s your business here?” he demanded, grimly. “Who are you?”
“My name was Isabella Linton,” I replied. “You’ve seen me before, sir. I’m lately married to Mr. Heathcliff, and he has brought me here—I suppose by your permission.”
“Is he come back, then?” asked the hermit, glaring like a hungry wolf.
“Yes—we came just now,” I said; “but he left me by the kitchen door; and when I would have gone in, your little boy played sentinel over the place, and frightened me off by the help of a bull-dog.”
“It’s well the hellish villain has kept his word!” growled my future host, searching the darkness beyond me in expectation of discovering Heathcliff; and then he indulged in a soliloquy of execrations, and threats of what he would have done had the “fiend” deceived him.
I repented having tried this second entrance, and was almost inclined to slip away before he finished cursing, but ere I could execute that intention, he ordered me in, and shut and re-fastened the door. There was a great fire, and that was all the light in the huge apartment, whose floor had grown a uniform grey; and the once brilliant pewter-dishes, which used to attract my gaze when I was a girl, partook of a similar obscurity, created by tarnish and dust. I inquired whether I might call the maid, and be conducted to a bedroom! Mr. Earnshaw vouchsafed no answer. He walked up and down, with his hands in his pockets, apparently quite forgetting my presence; and his abstraction was evidently so deep, and his whole aspect so misanthropical, that I shrank from disturbing him again.
You’ll not be surprised, Ellen, at my feeling particularly cheerless, seated in worse than solitude on that inhospitable hearth, and remembering that four miles distant lay my delightful home, containing the only people I loved on earth; and there might as well be the Atlantic to part us, instead of those four miles: I could not overpass them! I questioned with myself—where must I turn for comfort? and—mind you don’t tell Edgar, or Catherine—above every sorrow beside, this rose pre-eminent: despair at finding nobody who could or would be my ally against Heathcliff! I had sought shelter at Wuthering Heights, almost gladly, because I was secured by that arrangement from living alone with him; but he knew the people we were coming amongst, and he did not fear their intermeddling.
I sat and thought a doleful time: the clock struck eight, and nine, and still my companion paced to and fro, his head bent on his breast, and perfectly silent, unless a groan or a bitter ejaculation forced itself out at intervals. I listened to detect a woman’s voice in the house, and filled the interim with wild regrets and dismal anticipations, which, at last, spoke audibly in irrepressible sighing and weeping. I was not aware how openly I grieved, till Earnshaw halted opposite, in his measured walk, and gave me a stare of newly-awakened surprise. Taking advantage of his recovered attention, I exclaimed—“I’m tired with my journey, and I want to go to bed! Where is the maid-servant? Direct me to her, as she won’t come to me!”
“We have none,” he answered; “you must wait on yourself!”
“Where must I sleep, then?” I sobbed; I was beyond regarding self-respect, weighed down by fatigue and wretchedness.
“Joseph will show you Heathcliff’s chamber,” said he; “open that door—he’s in there.”
I was going to obey, but he suddenly arrested me, and added in the strangest tone—“Be so good as to turn your lock, and draw your bolt—don’t omit it!”
“Well!” I said. “But why, Mr. Earnshaw?” I did not relish the notion of deliberately fastening myself in with Heathcliff.
“Look here!” he replied, pulling from his waistcoat a curiously-constructed pistol, having a double-edged spring knife attached to the barrel. “That’s a great tempter to a desperate man, is it not? I cannot resist going up with this every night, and trying his door. If once I find it open he’s done for; I do it invariably, even though the minute before I have been recalling a hundred reasons that should make me refrain: it is some devil that urges me to thwart my own schemes by killing him. You fight against that devil for love as long as you may; when the time comes, not all the angels in heaven shall save him!”
I surveyed the weapon inquisitively. A hideous notion struck me: how powerful I should be possessing such an instrument! I took it from his hand, and touched the blade. He looked astonished at the expression my face assumed during a brief second: it was not horror, it was covetousness. He snatched the pistol back, jealously; shut the knife, and returned it to its concealment.
“I don’t care if you tell him,” said he. “Put him on his guard, and watch for him. You know the terms we are on, I see: his danger does not shock you.”
“What has Heathcliff done to you?” I asked. “In what has he wronged you, to warrant this appalling hatred? Wouldn’t it be wiser to bid him quit the house?”
“No!” thundered Earnshaw; “should he offer to leave me, he’s a dead man: persuade him to attempt it, and you are a murderess! Am I to lose all, without a chance of retrieval? Is Hareton to be a beggar? Oh, damnation! I will have it back; and I’ll have his gold too; and then his blood; and hell shall have his soul! It will be ten times blacker with that guest than ever it was before!”
You’ve acquainted me, Ellen, with your old master’s habits. He is clearly on the verge of madness: he was so last night at least. I shuddered to be near him, and thought on the servant’s ill-bred moroseness as comparatively agreeable. He now recommenced his moody walk, and I raised the latch, and escaped into the kitchen. Joseph was bending over the fire, peering into a large pan that swung above it; and a wooden bowl of oatmeal stood on the settle close by. The contents of the pan began to boil, and he turned to plunge his hand into the bowl; I conjectured that this preparation was probably for our supper, and, being hungry, I resolved it should be eatable; so, crying out sharply, “I’ll make the porridge!” I removed the vessel out of his reach, and proceeded to take off my hat and riding-habit. “Mr. Earnshaw,” I continued, “directs me to wait on myself: I will. I’m not going to act the lady among you, for fear I should starve.”
“Gooid Lord!” he muttered, sitting down, and stroking his ribbed stockings from the knee to the ankle. “If there’s to be fresh ortherings—just when I getten used to two maisters, if I mun hev’ a mistress set o’er my heead, it’s like time to be flitting. I niver did think to see t’ day that I mud lave th’ owld place—but I doubt it’s nigh at hand!”
This lamentation drew no notice from me: I went briskly to work, sighing to remember a period when it would have been all merry fun; but compelled speedily to drive off the remembrance. It racked me to recall past happiness and the greater peril there was of conjuring up its apparition, the quicker the thible ran round, and the faster the handfuls of meal fell into the water. Joseph beheld my style of cookery with growing indignation.
“Thear!” he ejaculated. “Hareton, thou willn’t sup thy porridge to-neeght; they’ll be naught but lumps as big as my neive. Thear, agean! I’d fling in bowl un’ all, if I wer ye! There, pale t’ guilp off, un’ then ye’ll hae done wi’t. Bang, bang. It’s a mercy t’ bothom isn’t deaved out!”
It was rather a rough mess, I own, when poured into the basins; four had been provided, and a gallon pitcher of new milk was brought from the dairy, which Hareton seized and commenced drinking and spilling from the expansive lip. I expostulated, and desired that he should have his in a mug; affirming that I could not taste the liquid treated so dirtily. The old cynic chose to be vastly offended at this nicety; assuring me, repeatedly, that “the barn was every bit as good” as I, “and every bit as wollsome,” and wondering how I could fashion to be so conceited. Meanwhile, the infant ruffian continued sucking; and glowered up at me defyingly, as he slavered into the jug.
“I shall have my supper in another room,” I said. “Have you no place you call a parlour?”
“Parlour!” he echoed, sneeringly, “parlour! Nay, we’ve noa parlours. If yah dunnut loike wer company, there’s maister’s; un’ if yah dunnut loike maister, there’s us.”
“Then I shall go upstairs,” I answered; “show me a chamber.”
I put my basin on a tray, and went myself to fetch some more milk. With great grumblings, the fellow rose, and preceded me in my ascent: we mounted to the garrets; he opened a door, now and then, to look into the apartments we passed.
“Here’s a rahm,” he said, at last, flinging back a cranky board on hinges. “It’s weel eneugh to ate a few porridge in. There’s a pack o’ corn i’ t’ corner, thear, meeterly clane; if ye’re feared o’ muckying yer grand silk cloes, spread yer hankerchir o’ t’ top on’t.”
The “rahm” was a kind of lumber-hole smelling strong of malt and grain; various sacks of which articles were piled around, leaving a wide, bare space in the middle.
“Why, man,” I exclaimed, facing him angrily, “this is not a place to sleep in. I wish to see my bed-room.”
“Bed-rume!” he repeated, in a tone of mockery. “Yah’s see all t’ bed-rumes thear is—yon’s mine.”
He pointed into the second garret, only differing from the first in being more naked about the walls, and having a large, low, curtainless bed, with an indigo-coloured quilt, at one end.
“What do I want with yours?” I retorted. “I suppose Mr. Heathcliff does not lodge at the top of the house, does he?”
“Oh! it’s Maister Hathecliff’s ye’re wanting?” cried he, as if making a new discovery. “Couldn’t ye ha’ said soa, at onst? un’ then, I mud ha’ telled ye, baht all this wark, that that’s just one ye cannut see—he allas keeps it locked, un’ nob’dy iver mells on’t but hisseln.”
“You’ve a nice house, Joseph,” I could not refrain from observing, “and pleasant inmates; and I think the concentrated essence of all the madness in the world took up its abode in my brain the day I linked my fate with theirs! However, that is not to the present purpose—there are other rooms. For heaven’s sake be quick, and let me settle somewhere!”
He made no reply to this adjuration; only plodding doggedly down the wooden steps, and halting before an apartment which, from that halt and the superior quality of its furniture, I conjectured to be the best one. There was a carpet—a good one, but the pattern was obliterated by dust; a fireplace hung with cut-paper, dropping to pieces; a handsome oak-bedstead with ample crimson curtains of rather expensive material and modern make; but they had evidently experienced rough usage: the vallances hung in festoons, wrenched from their rings, and the iron rod supporting them was bent in an arc on one side, causing the drapery to trail upon the floor. The chairs were also damaged, many of them severely; and deep indentations deformed the panels of the walls. I was endeavouring to gather resolution for entering and taking possession, when my fool of a guide announced,—“This here is t’ maister’s.” My supper by this time was cold, my appetite gone, and my patience exhausted. I insisted on being provided instantly with a place of refuge, and means of repose.
“Whear the divil?” began the religious elder. “The Lord bless us! The Lord forgie us! Whear the hell wold ye gang? ye marred, wearisome nowt! Ye’ve seen all but Hareton’s bit of a cham’er. There’s not another hoile to lig down in i’ th’ hahse!”
I was so vexed, I flung my tray and its contents on the ground; and then seated myself at the stairs’-head, hid my face in my hands, and cried.
“Ech! ech!” exclaimed Joseph. “Weel done, Miss Cathy! weel done, Miss Cathy! Howsiver, t’ maister sall just tum’le o’er them brocken pots; un’ then we’s hear summut; we’s hear how it’s to be. Gooid-for-naught madling! ye desarve pining fro’ this to Churstmas, flinging t’ precious gifts uh God under fooit i’ yer flaysome rages! But I’m mista’en if ye shew yer sperrit lang. Will Hathecliff bide sich bonny ways, think ye? I nobbut wish he may catch ye i’ that plisky. I nobbut wish he may.”
And so he went on scolding to his den beneath, taking the candle with him; and I remained in the dark. The period of reflection succeeding this silly action compelled me to admit the necessity of smothering my pride and choking my wrath, and bestirring myself to remove its effects. An unexpected aid presently appeared in the shape of Throttler, whom I now recognised as a son of our old Skulker: it had spent its whelphood at the Grange, and was given by my father to Mr. Hindley. I fancy it knew me: it pushed its nose against mine by way of salute, and then hastened to devour the porridge; while I groped from step to step, collecting the shattered earthenware, and drying the spatters of milk from the banister with my pocket-handkerchief. Our labours were scarcely over when I heard Earnshaw’s tread in the passage; my assistant tucked in his tail, and pressed to the wall; I stole into the nearest doorway. The dog’s endeavour to avoid him was unsuccessful; as I guessed by a scutter downstairs, and a prolonged, piteous yelping. I had better luck: he passed on, entered his chamber, and shut the door. Directly after Joseph came up with Hareton, to put him to bed. I had found shelter in Hareton’s room, and the old man, on seeing me, said,—“They’s rahm for boath ye un’ yer pride, now, I sud think i’ the hahse. It’s empty; ye may hev’ it all to yerseln, un’ Him as allas maks a third, i’ sich ill company!”
Gladly did I take advantage of this intimation; and the minute I flung myself into a chair, by the fire, I nodded, and slept. My slumber was deep and sweet, though over far too soon. Mr. Heathcliff awoke me; he had just come in, and demanded, in his loving manner, what I was doing there? I told him the cause of my staying up so late—that he had the key of our room in his pocket. The adjective our gave mortal offence. He swore it was not, nor ever should be, mine; and he’d—but I’ll not repeat his language, nor describe his habitual conduct: he is ingenious and unresting in seeking to gain my abhorrence! I sometimes wonder at him with an intensity that deadens my fear: yet, I assure you, a tiger or a venomous serpent could not rouse terror in me equal to that which he wakens. He told me of Catherine’s illness, and accused my brother of causing it; promising that I should be Edgar’s proxy in suffering, till he could get hold of him.
I do hate him—I am wretched—I have been a fool! Beware of uttering one breath of this to any one at the Grange. I shall expect you every day—don’t disappoint me!—ISABELLA.
CHAPTER XIV
As soon as I had perused this epistle I went to the master, and informed him that his sister had arrived at the Heights, and sent me a letter expressing her sorrow for Mrs. Linton’s situation, and her ardent desire to see him; with a wish that he would transmit to her, as early as possible, some token of forgiveness by me.
“Forgiveness!” said Linton. “I have nothing to forgive her, Ellen. You may call at Wuthering Heights this afternoon, if you like, and say that I am not angry, but I’m sorry to have lost her; especially as I can never think she’ll be happy. It is out of the question my going to see her, however: we are eternally divided; and should she really wish to oblige me, let her persuade the villain she has married to leave the country.”
“And you won’t write her a little note, sir?” I asked, imploringly.
“No,” he answered. “It is needless. My communication with Heathcliff’s family shall be as sparing as his with mine. It shall not exist!”
Mr. Edgar’s coldness depressed me exceedingly; and all the way from the Grange I puzzled my brains how to put more heart into what he said, when I repeated it; and how to soften his refusal of even a few lines to console Isabella. I daresay she had been on the watch for me since morning: I saw her looking through the lattice as I came up the garden causeway, and I nodded to her; but she drew back, as if afraid of being observed. I entered without knocking. There never was such a dreary, dismal scene as the formerly cheerful house presented! I must confess, that if I had been in the young lady’s place, I would, at least, have swept the hearth, and wiped the tables with a duster. But she already partook of the pervading spirit of neglect which encompassed her. Her pretty face was wan and listless; her hair uncurled: some locks hanging lankly down, and some carelessly twisted round her head. Probably she had not touched her dress since yester evening. Hindley was not there. Mr. Heathcliff sat at a table, turning over some papers in his pocket-book; but he rose when I appeared, asked me how I did, quite friendly, and offered me a chair. He was the only thing there that seemed decent; and I thought he never looked better. So much had circumstances altered their positions, that he would certainly have struck a stranger as a born and bred gentleman; and his wife as a thorough little slattern! She came forward eagerly to greet me, and held out one hand to take the expected letter. I shook my head. She wouldn’t understand the hint, but followed me to a sideboard, where I went to lay my bonnet, and importuned me in a whisper to give her directly what I had brought. Heathcliff guessed the meaning of her manœuvres, and said—“If you have got anything for Isabella (as no doubt you have, Nelly), give it to her. You needn’t make a secret of it: we have no secrets between us.”
“Oh, I have nothing,” I replied, thinking it best to speak the truth at once. “My master bid me tell his sister that she must not expect either a letter or a visit from him at present. He sends his love, ma’am, and his wishes for your happiness, and his pardon for the grief you have occasioned; but he thinks that after this time his household and the household here should drop intercommunication, as nothing could come of keeping it up.”
Mrs. Heathcliff’s lip quivered slightly, and she returned to her seat in the window. Her husband took his stand on the hearthstone, near me, and began to put questions concerning Catherine. I told him as much as I thought proper of her illness, and he extorted from me, by cross-examination, most of the facts connected with its origin. I blamed her, as she deserved, for bringing it all on herself; and ended by hoping that he would follow Mr. Linton’s example and avoid future interference with his family, for good or evil.
“Mrs. Linton is now just recovering,” I said; “she’ll never be like she was, but her life is spared; and if you really have a regard for her, you’ll shun crossing her way again: nay, you’ll move out of this country entirely; and that you may not regret it, I’ll inform you Catherine Linton is as different now from your old friend Catherine Earnshaw, as that young lady is different from me. Her appearance is changed greatly, her character much more so; and the person who is compelled, of necessity, to be her companion, will only sustain his affection hereafter by the remembrance of what she once was, by common humanity, and a sense of duty!”
“That is quite possible,” remarked Heathcliff, forcing himself to seem calm: “quite possible that your master should have nothing but common humanity and a sense of duty to fall back upon. But do you imagine that I shall leave Catherine to his duty and humanity? and can you compare my feelings respecting Catherine to his? Before you leave this house, I must exact a promise from you that you’ll get me an interview with her: consent, or refuse, I will see her! What do you say?”
“I say, Mr. Heathcliff,” I replied, “you must not: you never shall, through my means. Another encounter between you and the master would kill her altogether.”
“With your aid that may be avoided,” he continued; “and should there be danger of such an event—should he be the cause of adding a single trouble more to her existence—why, I think I shall be justified in going to extremes! I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether Catherine would suffer greatly from his loss: the fear that she would restrains me. And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But, till then—if you don’t believe me, you don’t know me—till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!”
“And yet,” I interrupted, “you have no scruples in completely ruining all hopes of her perfect restoration, by thrusting yourself into her remembrance now, when she has nearly forgotten you, and involving her in a new tumult of discord and distress.”
“You suppose she has nearly forgotten me?” he said. “Oh, Nelly! you know she has not! You know as well as I do, that for every thought she spends on Linton she spends a thousand on me! At a most miserable period of my life, I had a notion of the kind: it haunted me on my return to the neighbourhood last summer; but only her own assurance could make me admit the horrible idea again. And then, Linton would be nothing, nor Hindley, nor all the dreams that ever I dreamt. Two words would comprehend my future—death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell. Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton’s attachment more than mine. If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have: the sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough as her whole affection be monopolised by him. Tush! He is scarcely a degree dearer to her than her dog, or her horse. It is not in him to be loved like me: how can she love in him what he has not?”
“Catherine and Edgar are as fond of each other as any two people can be,” cried Isabella, with sudden vivacity. “No one has a right to talk in that manner, and I won’t hear my brother depreciated in silence!”
“Your brother is wondrous fond of you too, isn’t he?” observed Heathcliff, scornfully. “He turns you adrift on the world with surprising alacrity.”
“He is not aware of what I suffer,” she replied. “I didn’t tell him that.”
“You have been telling him something, then: you have written, have you?”
“To say that I was married, I did write—you saw the note.”
“And nothing since?”
“No.”
“My young lady is looking sadly the worse for her change of condition,” I remarked. “Somebody’s love comes short in her case, obviously; whose, I may guess; but, perhaps, I shouldn’t say.”
“I should guess it was her own,” said Heathcliff. “She degenerates into a mere slut! She is tired of trying to please me uncommonly early. You’d hardly credit it, but the very morrow of our wedding she was weeping to go home. However, she’ll suit this house so much the better for not being over nice, and I’ll take care she does not disgrace me by rambling abroad.”
“Well, sir,” returned I, “I hope you’ll consider that Mrs. Heathcliff is accustomed to be looked after and waited on; and that she has been brought up like an only daughter, whom every one was ready to serve. You must let her have a maid to keep things tidy about her, and you must treat her kindly. Whatever be your notion of Mr. Edgar, you cannot doubt that she has a capacity for strong attachments, or she wouldn’t have abandoned the elegancies, and comforts, and friends of her former home, to fix contentedly, in such a wilderness as this, with you.”
“She abandoned them under a delusion,” he answered; “picturing in me a hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature, so obstinately has she persisted in forming a fabulous notion of my character and acting on the false impressions she cherished. But, at last, I think she begins to know me: I don’t perceive the silly smiles and grimaces that provoked me at first; and the senseless incapability of discerning that I was in earnest when I gave her my opinion of her infatuation and herself. It was a marvellous effort of perspicacity to discover that I did not love her. I believed, at one time, no lessons could teach her that! And yet it is poorly learnt; for this morning she announced, as a piece of appalling intelligence, that I had actually succeeded in making her hate me! A positive labour of Hercules, I assure you! If it be achieved, I have cause to return thanks. Can I trust your assertion, Isabella? Are you sure you hate me? If I let you alone for half a day, won’t you come sighing and wheedling to me again? I daresay she would rather I had seemed all tenderness before you: it wounds her vanity to have the truth exposed. But I don’t care who knows that the passion was wholly on one side: and I never told her a lie about it. She cannot accuse me of showing one bit of deceitful softness. The first thing she saw me do, on coming out of the Grange, was to hang up her little dog; and when she pleaded for it, the first words I uttered were a wish that I had the hanging of every being belonging to her, except one: possibly she took that exception for herself. But no brutality disgusted her: I suppose she has an innate admiration of it, if only her precious person were secure from injury! Now, was it not the depth of absurdity—of genuine idiocy, for that pitiful, slavish, mean-minded brach to dream that I could love her? Tell your master, Nelly, that I never, in all my life, met with such an abject thing as she is. She even disgraces the name of Linton; and I’ve sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, in my experiments on what she could endure, and still creep shamefully cringing back! But tell him, also, to set his fraternal and magisterial heart at ease: that I keep strictly within the limits of the law. I have avoided, up to this period, giving her the slightest right to claim a separation; and, what’s more, she’d thank nobody for dividing us. If she desired to go, she might: the nuisance of her presence outweighs the gratification to be derived from tormenting her!”
“Mr. Heathcliff,” said I, “this is the talk of a madman; your wife, most likely, is convinced you are mad; and, for that reason, she has borne with you hitherto: but now that you say she may go, she’ll doubtless avail herself of the permission. You are not so bewitched, ma’am, are you, as to remain with him of your own accord?”
“Take care, Ellen!” answered Isabella, her eyes sparkling irefully; there was no misdoubting by their expression the full success of her partner’s endeavours to make himself detested. “Don’t put faith in a single word he speaks. He’s a lying fiend! a monster, and not a human being! I’ve been told I might leave him before; and I’ve made the attempt, but I dare not repeat it! Only, Ellen, promise you’ll not mention a syllable of his infamous conversation to my brother or Catherine. Whatever he may pretend, he wishes to provoke Edgar to desperation: he says he has married me on purpose to obtain power over him; and he sha’n’t obtain it—I’ll die first! I just hope, I pray, that he may forget his diabolical prudence and kill me! The single pleasure I can imagine is to die, or to see him dead!”
“There—that will do for the present!” said Heathcliff. “If you are called upon in a court of law, you’ll remember her language, Nelly! And take a good look at that countenance: she’s near the point which would suit me. No; you’re not fit to be your own guardian, Isabella, now; and I, being your legal protector, must retain you in my custody, however distasteful the obligation may be. Go upstairs; I have something to say to Ellen Dean in private. That’s not the way: upstairs, I tell you! Why, this is the road upstairs, child!”
He seized, and thrust her from the room; and returned muttering—“I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and I grind with greater energy in proportion to the increase of pain.”
“Do you understand what the word pity means?” I said, hastening to resume my bonnet. “Did you ever feel a touch of it in your life?”
“Put that down!” he interrupted, perceiving my intention to depart. “You are not going yet. Come here now, Nelly: I must either persuade or compel you to aid me in fulfilling my determination to see Catherine, and that without delay. I swear that I meditate no harm: I don’t desire to cause any disturbance, or to exasperate or insult Mr. Linton; I only wish to hear from herself how she is, and why she has been ill; and to ask if anything that I could do would be of use to her. Last night I was in the Grange garden six hours, and I’ll return there to-night; and every night I’ll haunt the place, and every day, till I find an opportunity of entering. If Edgar Linton meets me, I shall not hesitate to knock him down, and give him enough to insure his quiescence while I stay. If his servants oppose me, I shall threaten them off with these pistols. But wouldn’t it be better to prevent my coming in contact with them, or their master? And you could do it so easily. I’d warn you when I came, and then you might let me in unobserved, as soon as she was alone, and watch till I departed, your conscience quite calm: you would be hindering mischief.”
I protested against playing that treacherous part in my employer’s house: and, besides, I urged the cruelty and selfishness of his destroying Mrs. Linton’s tranquillity for his satisfaction. “The commonest occurrence startles her painfully,” I said. “She’s all nerves, and she couldn’t bear the surprise, I’m positive. Don’t persist, sir! or else I shall be obliged to inform my master of your designs; and he’ll take measures to secure his house and its inmates from any such unwarrantable intrusions!”
“In that case I’ll take measures to secure you, woman!” exclaimed Heathcliff; “you shall not leave Wuthering Heights till to-morrow morning. It is a foolish story to assert that Catherine could not bear to see me; and as to surprising her, I don’t desire it: you must prepare her—ask her if I may come. You say she never mentions my name, and that I am never mentioned to her. To whom should she mention me if I am a forbidden topic in the house? She thinks you are all spies for her husband. Oh, I’ve no doubt she’s in hell among you! I guess by her silence, as much as anything, what she feels. You say she is often restless, and anxious-looking: is that a proof of tranquillity? You talk of her mind being unsettled. How the devil could it be otherwise in her frightful isolation? And that insipid, paltry creature attending her from duty and humanity! From pity and charity! He might as well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares! Let us settle it at once: will you stay here, and am I to fight my way to Catherine over Linton and his footman? Or will you be my friend, as you have been hitherto, and do what I request? Decide! because there is no reason for my lingering another minute, if you persist in your stubborn ill-nature!”
Well, Mr. Lockwood, I argued and complained, and flatly refused him fifty times; but in the long run he forced me to an agreement. I engaged to carry a letter from him to my mistress; and should she consent, I promised to let him have intelligence of Linton’s next absence from home, when he might come, and get in as he was able: I wouldn’t be there, and my fellow-servants should be equally out of the way. Was it right or wrong? I fear it was wrong, though expedient. I thought I prevented another explosion by my compliance; and I thought, too, it might create a favourable crisis in Catherine’s mental illness: and then I remembered Mr. Edgar’s stern rebuke of my carrying tales; and I tried to smooth away all disquietude on the subject, by affirming, with frequent iteration, that that betrayal of trust, if it merited so harsh an appellation, should be the last. Notwithstanding, my journey homeward was sadder than my journey thither; and many misgivings I had, ere I could prevail on myself to put the missive into Mrs. Linton’s hand.
But here is Kenneth; I’ll go down, and tell him how much better you are. My history is dree, as we say, and will serve to while away another morning.
* * * * *
Dree, and dreary! I reflected as the good woman descended to receive the doctor: and not exactly of the kind which I should have chosen to amuse me. But never mind! I’ll extract wholesome medicines from Mrs. Dean’s bitter herbs; and firstly, let me beware of the fascination that lurks in Catherine Heathcliff’s brilliant eyes. I should be in a curious taking if I surrendered my heart to that young person, and the daughter turned out a second edition of the mother.
CHAPTER XV
Another week over—and I am so many days nearer health, and spring! I have now heard all my neighbour’s history, at different sittings, as the housekeeper could spare time from more important occupations. I’ll continue it in her own words, only a little condensed. She is, on the whole, a very fair narrator, and I don’t think I could improve her style.
* * * * *
In the evening, she said, the evening of my visit to the Heights, I knew, as well as if I saw him, that Mr. Heathcliff was about the place; and I shunned going out, because I still carried his letter in my pocket, and didn’t want to be threatened or teased any more. I had made up my mind not to give it till my master went somewhere, as I could not guess how its receipt would affect Catherine. The consequence was, that it did not reach her before the lapse of three days. The fourth was Sunday, and I brought it into her room after the family were gone to church. There was a man servant left to keep the house with me, and we generally made a practice of locking the doors during the hours of service; but on that occasion the weather was so warm and pleasant that I set them wide open, and, to fulfil my engagement, as I knew who would be coming, I told my companion that the mistress wished very much for some oranges, and he must run over to the village and get a few, to be paid for on the morrow. He departed, and I went upstairs.
Mrs. Linton sat in a loose white dress, with a light shawl over her shoulders, in the recess of the open window, as usual. Her thick, long hair had been partly removed at the beginning of her illness, and now she wore it simply combed in its natural tresses over her temples and neck. Her appearance was altered, as I had told Heathcliff; but when she was calm, there seemed unearthly beauty in the change. The flash of her eyes had been succeeded by a dreamy and melancholy softness; they no longer gave the impression of looking at the objects around her: they appeared always to gaze beyond, and far beyond—you would have said out of this world. Then, the paleness of her face—its haggard aspect having vanished as she recovered flesh—and the peculiar expression arising from her mental state, though painfully suggestive of their causes, added to the touching interest which she awakened; and—invariably to me, I know, and to any person who saw her, I should think—refuted more tangible proofs of convalescence, and stamped her as one doomed to decay.
A book lay spread on the sill before her, and the scarcely perceptible wind fluttered its leaves at intervals. I believe Linton had laid it there: for she never endeavoured to divert herself with reading, or occupation of any kind, and he would spend many an hour in trying to entice her attention to some subject which had formerly been her amusement. She was conscious of his aim, and in her better moods endured his efforts placidly, only showing their uselessness by now and then suppressing a wearied sigh, and checking him at last with the saddest of smiles and kisses. At other times, she would turn petulantly away, and hide her face in her hands, or even push him off angrily; and then he took care to let her alone, for he was certain of doing no good.
Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. At Wuthering Heights it always sounded on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of steady rain. And of Wuthering Heights Catherine was thinking as she listened: that is, if she thought or listened at all; but she had the vague, distant look I mentioned before, which expressed no recognition of material things either by ear or eye.
“There’s a letter for you, Mrs. Linton,” I said, gently inserting it in one hand that rested on her knee. “You must read it immediately, because it wants an answer. Shall I break the seal?” “Yes,” she answered, without altering the direction of her eyes. I opened it—it was very short. “Now,” I continued, “read it.” She drew away her hand, and let it fall. I replaced it in her lap, and stood waiting till it should please her to glance down; but that movement was so long delayed that at last I resumed—“Must I read it, ma’am? It is from Mr. Heathcliff.”
There was a start and a troubled gleam of recollection, and a struggle to arrange her ideas. She lifted the letter, and seemed to peruse it; and when she came to the signature she sighed: yet still I found she had not gathered its import, for, upon my desiring to hear her reply, she merely pointed to the name, and gazed at me with mournful and questioning eagerness.
“Well, he wishes to see you,” said I, guessing her need of an interpreter. “He’s in the garden by this time, and impatient to know what answer I shall bring.”
As I spoke, I observed a large dog lying on the sunny grass beneath raise its ears as if about to bark, and then smoothing them back, announce, by a wag of the tail, that some one approached whom it did not consider a stranger. Mrs. Linton bent forward, and listened breathlessly. The minute after a step traversed the hall; the open house was too tempting for Heathcliff to resist walking in: most likely he supposed that I was inclined to shirk my promise, and so resolved to trust to his own audacity. With straining eagerness Catherine gazed towards the entrance of her chamber. He did not hit the right room directly: she motioned me to admit him, but he found it out ere I could reach the door, and in a stride or two was at her side, and had her grasped in his arms.
He neither spoke nor loosed his hold for some five minutes, during which period he bestowed more kisses than ever he gave in his life before, I daresay: but then my mistress had kissed him first, and I plainly saw that he could hardly bear, for downright agony, to look into her face! The same conviction had stricken him as me, from the instant he beheld her, that there was no prospect of ultimate recovery there—she was fated, sure to die.
“Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! how can I bear it?” was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish: they did not melt.
“What now?” said Catherine, leaning back, and returning his look with a suddenly clouded brow: her humour was a mere vane for constantly varying caprices. “You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff! And you both come to bewail the deed to me, as if you were the people to be pitied! I shall not pity you, not I. You have killed me—and thriven on it, I think. How strong you are! How many years do you mean to live after I am gone?”
Heathcliff had knelt on one knee to embrace her; he attempted to rise, but she seized his hair, and kept him down.
“I wish I could hold you,” she continued, bitterly, “till we were both dead! I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn’t you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, ‘That’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I’ve loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!’ Will you say so, Heathcliff?”
“Don’t torture me till I’m as mad as yourself,” cried he, wrenching his head free, and grinding his teeth.
The two, to a cool spectator, made a strange and fearful picture. Well might Catherine deem that heaven would be a land of exile to her, unless with her mortal body she cast away her moral character also. Her present countenance had a wild vindictiveness in its white cheek, and a bloodless lip and scintillating eye; and she retained in her closed fingers a portion of the locks she had been grasping. As to her companion, while raising himself with one hand, he had taken her arm with the other; and so inadequate was his stock of gentleness to the requirements of her condition, that on his letting go I saw four distinct impressions left blue in the colourless skin.
“Are you possessed with a devil,” he pursued, savagely, “to talk in that manner to me when you are dying? Do you reflect that all those words will be branded in my memory, and eating deeper eternally after you have left me? You know you lie to say I have killed you: and, Catherine, you know that I could as soon forget you as my existence! Is it not sufficient for your infernal selfishness, that while you are at peace I shall writhe in the torments of hell?”
“I shall not be at peace,” moaned Catherine, recalled to a sense of physical weakness by the violent, unequal throbbing of her heart, which beat visibly and audibly under this excess of agitation. She said nothing further till the paroxysm was over; then she continued, more kindly—
“I’m not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted: and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress underground, and for my own sake, forgive me! Come here and kneel down again! You never harmed me in your life. Nay, if you nurse anger, that will be worse to remember than my harsh words! Won’t you come here again? Do!”
Heathcliff went to the back of her chair, and leant over, but not so far as to let her see his face, which was livid with emotion. She bent round to look at him; he would not permit it: turning abruptly, he walked to the fireplace, where he stood, silent, with his back towards us. Mrs. Linton’s glance followed him suspiciously: every movement woke a new sentiment in her. After a pause and a prolonged gaze, she resumed; addressing me in accents of indignant disappointment:—
“Oh, you see, Nelly, he would not relent a moment to keep me out of the grave. That is how I’m loved! Well, never mind. That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he’s in my soul. And,” added she musingly, “the thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I’m tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it. Nelly, you think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength: you are sorry for me—very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for you. I shall be incomparably beyond and above you all. I wonder he won’t be near me!” She went on to herself. “I thought he wished it. Heathcliff, dear! you should not be sullen now. Do come to me, Heathcliff.”
In her eagerness she rose and supported herself on the arm of the chair. At that earnest appeal he turned to her, looking absolutely desperate. His eyes, wide and wet, at last flashed fiercely on her; his breast heaved convulsively. An instant they held asunder, and then how they met I hardly saw, but Catherine made a spring, and he caught her, and they were locked in an embrace from which I thought my mistress would never be released alive: in fact, to my eyes, she seemed directly insensible. He flung himself into the nearest seat, and on my approaching hurriedly to ascertain if she had fainted, he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with greedy jealousy. I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species: it appeared that he would not understand, though I spoke to him; so I stood off, and held my tongue, in great perplexity.
A movement of Catherine’s relieved me a little presently: she put up her hand to clasp his neck, and bring her cheek to his as he held her; while he, in return, covering her with frantic caresses, said wildly—
“You teach me now how cruel you’ve been—cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they’ll blight you—they’ll damn you. You loved me—then what right had you to leave me? What right—answer me—for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you—oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?”
“Let me alone. Let me alone,” sobbed Catherine. “If I’ve done wrong, I’m dying for it. It is enough! You left me too: but I won’t upbraid you! I forgive you. Forgive me!”
“It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,” he answered. “Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours! How can I?”
They were silent—their faces hid against each other, and washed by each other’s tears. At least, I suppose the weeping was on both sides; as it seemed Heathcliff could weep on a great occasion like this.
I grew very uncomfortable, meanwhile; for the afternoon wore fast away, the man whom I had sent off returned from his errand, and I could distinguish, by the shine of the western sun up the valley, a concourse thickening outside Gimmerton chapel porch.
“Service is over,” I announced. “My master will be here in half an hour.”
Heathcliff groaned a curse, and strained Catherine closer: she never moved.
Ere long I perceived a group of the servants passing up the road towards the kitchen wing. Mr. Linton was not far behind; he opened the gate himself and sauntered slowly up, probably enjoying the lovely afternoon that breathed as soft as summer.
“Now he is here,” I exclaimed. “For heaven’s sake, hurry down! You’ll not meet any one on the front stairs. Do be quick; and stay among the trees till he is fairly in.”
“I must go, Cathy,” said Heathcliff, seeking to extricate himself from his companion’s arms. “But if I live, I’ll see you again before you are asleep. I won’t stray five yards from your window.”
“You must not go!” she answered, holding him as firmly as her strength allowed. “You shall not, I tell you.”
“For one hour,” he pleaded earnestly.
“Not for one minute,” she replied.
“I must—Linton will be up immediately,” persisted the alarmed intruder.
He would have risen, and unfixed her fingers by the act—she clung fast, gasping: there was mad resolution in her face.
“No!” she shrieked. “Oh, don’t, don’t go. It is the last time! Edgar will not hurt us. Heathcliff, I shall die! I shall die!”
“Damn the fool! There he is,” cried Heathcliff, sinking back into his seat. “Hush, my darling! Hush, hush, Catherine! I’ll stay. If he shot me so, I’d expire with a blessing on my lips.”
And there they were fast again. I heard my master mounting the stairs—the cold sweat ran from my forehead: I was horrified.
“Are you going to listen to her ravings?” I said, passionately. “She does not know what she says. Will you ruin her, because she has not wit to help herself? Get up! You could be free instantly. That is the most diabolical deed that ever you did. We are all done for—master, mistress, and servant.”
I wrung my hands, and cried out; and Mr. Linton hastened his step at the noise. In the midst of my agitation, I was sincerely glad to observe that Catherine’s arms had fallen relaxed, and her head hung down.
“She’s fainted, or dead,” I thought: “so much the better. Far better that she should be dead, than lingering a burden and a misery-maker to all about her.”
Edgar sprang to his unbidden guest, blanched with astonishment and rage. What he meant to do I cannot tell; however, the other stopped all demonstrations, at once, by placing the lifeless-looking form in his arms.
“Look there!” he said. “Unless you be a fiend, help her first—then you shall speak to me!”
He walked into the parlour, and sat down. Mr. Linton summoned me, and with great difficulty, and after resorting to many means, we managed to restore her to sensation; but she was all bewildered; she sighed, and moaned, and knew nobody. Edgar, in his anxiety for her, forgot her hated friend. I did not. I went, at the earliest opportunity, and besought him to depart; affirming that Catherine was better, and he should hear from me in the morning how she passed the night.
“I shall not refuse to go out of doors,” he answered; “but I shall stay in the garden: and, Nelly, mind you keep your word to-morrow. I shall be under those larch-trees. Mind! or I pay another visit, whether Linton be in or not.”
He sent a rapid glance through the half-open door of the chamber, and, ascertaining that what I stated was apparently true, delivered the house of his luckless presence.
CHAPTER XVI
About twelve o’clock that night was born the Catherine you saw at Wuthering Heights: a puny, seven-months’ child; and two hours after the mother died, having never recovered sufficient consciousness to miss Heathcliff, or know Edgar. The latter’s distraction at his bereavement is a subject too painful to be dwelt on; its after-effects showed how deep the sorrow sunk. A great addition, in my eyes, was his being left without an heir. I bemoaned that, as I gazed on the feeble orphan; and I mentally abused old Linton for (what was only natural partiality) the securing his estate to his own daughter, instead of his son’s. An unwelcomed infant it was, poor thing! It might have wailed out of life, and nobody cared a morsel, during those first hours of existence. We redeemed the neglect afterwards; but its beginning was as friendless as its end is likely to be.
Next morning—bright and cheerful out of doors—stole softened in through the blinds of the silent room, and suffused the couch and its occupant with a mellow, tender glow. Edgar Linton had his head laid on the pillow, and his eyes shut. His young and fair features were almost as deathlike as those of the form beside him, and almost as fixed: but his was the hush of exhausted anguish, and hers of perfect peace. Her brow smooth, her lids closed, her lips wearing the expression of a smile; no angel in heaven could be more beautiful than she appeared. And I partook of the infinite calm in which she lay: my mind was never in a holier frame than while I gazed on that untroubled image of Divine rest. I instinctively echoed the words she had uttered a few hours before: “Incomparably beyond and above us all! Whether still on earth or now in heaven, her spirit is at home with God!”
I don’t know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, should no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter—the Eternity they have entered—where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness. I noticed on that occasion how much selfishness there is even in a love like Mr. Linton’s, when he so regretted Catherine’s blessed release! To be sure, one might have doubted, after the wayward and impatient existence she had led, whether she merited a haven of peace at last. One might doubt in seasons of cold reflection; but not then, in the presence of her corpse. It asserted its own tranquillity, which seemed a pledge of equal quiet to its former inhabitant.
Do you believe such people are happy in the other world, sir? I’d give a great deal to know.
I declined answering Mrs. Dean’s question, which struck me as something heterodox. She proceeded:
Retracing the course of Catherine Linton, I fear we have no right to think she is; but we’ll leave her with her Maker.
The master looked asleep, and I ventured soon after sunrise to quit the room and steal out to the pure refreshing air. The servants thought me gone to shake off the drowsiness of my protracted watch; in reality, my chief motive was seeing Mr. Heathcliff. If he had remained among the larches all night, he would have heard nothing of the stir at the Grange; unless, perhaps, he might catch the gallop of the messenger going to Gimmerton. If he had come nearer, he would probably be aware, from the lights flitting to and fro, and the opening and shutting of the outer doors, that all was not right within. I wished, yet feared, to find him. I felt the terrible news must be told, and I longed to get it over; but how to do it I did not know. He was there—at least, a few yards further in the park; leant against an old ash-tree, his hat off, and his hair soaked with the dew that had gathered on the budded branches, and fell pattering round him. He had been standing a long time in that position, for I saw a pair of ousels passing and repassing scarcely three feet from him, busy in building their nest, and regarding his proximity no more than that of a piece of timber. They flew off at my approach, and he raised his eyes and spoke:—“She’s dead!” he said; “I’ve not waited for you to learn that. Put your handkerchief away—don’t snivel before me. Damn you all! she wants none of your tears!”
I was weeping as much for him as her: we do sometimes pity creatures that have none of the feeling either for themselves or others. When I first looked into his face, I perceived that he had got intelligence of the catastrophe; and a foolish notion struck me that his heart was quelled and he prayed, because his lips moved and his gaze was bent on the ground.
“Yes, she’s dead!” I answered, checking my sobs and drying my cheeks. “Gone to heaven, I hope; where we may, every one, join her, if we take due warning and leave our evil ways to follow good!”
“Did she take due warning, then?” asked Heathcliff, attempting a sneer. “Did she die like a saint? Come, give me a true history of the event. How did—?”
He endeavoured to pronounce the name, but could not manage it; and compressing his mouth he held a silent combat with his inward agony, defying, meanwhile, my sympathy with an unflinching, ferocious stare. “How did she die?” he resumed, at last—fain, notwithstanding his hardihood, to have a support behind him; for, after the struggle, he trembled, in spite of himself, to his very finger-ends.
“Poor wretch!” I thought; “you have a heart and nerves the same as your brother men! Why should you be anxious to conceal them? Your pride cannot blind God! You tempt him to wring them, till he forces a cry of humiliation.”
“Quietly as a lamb!” I answered, aloud. “She drew a sigh, and stretched herself, like a child reviving, and sinking again to sleep; and five minutes after I felt one little pulse at her heart, and nothing more!”
“And—did she ever mention me?” he asked, hesitating, as if he dreaded the answer to his question would introduce details that he could not bear to hear.
“Her senses never returned: she recognised nobody from the time you left her,” I said. “She lies with a sweet smile on her face; and her latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days. Her life closed in a gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world!”
“May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. “Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”
He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast being goaded to death with knives and spears. I observed several splashes of blood about the bark of the tree, and his hand and forehead were both stained; probably the scene I witnessed was a repetition of others acted during the night. It hardly moved my compassion—it appalled me: still, I felt reluctant to quit him so. But the moment he recollected himself enough to notice me watching, he thundered a command for me to go, and I obeyed. He was beyond my skill to quiet or console!
Mrs. Linton’s funeral was appointed to take place on the Friday following her decease; and till then her coffin remained uncovered, and strewn with flowers and scented leaves, in the great drawing-room. Linton spent his days and nights there, a sleepless guardian; and—a circumstance concealed from all but me—Heathcliff spent his nights, at least, outside, equally a stranger to repose. I held no communication with him; still, I was conscious of his design to enter, if he could; and on the Tuesday, a little after dark, when my master, from sheer fatigue, had been compelled to retire a couple of hours, I went and opened one of the windows; moved by his perseverance to give him a chance of bestowing on the faded image of his idol one final adieu. He did not omit to avail himself of the opportunity, cautiously and briefly; too cautiously to betray his presence by the slightest noise. Indeed, I shouldn’t have discovered that he had been there, except for the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse’s face, and for observing on the floor a curl of light hair, fastened with a silver thread; which, on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a locket hung round Catherine’s neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own. I twisted the two, and enclosed them together.
Mr. Earnshaw was, of course, invited to attend the remains of his sister to the grave; he sent no excuse, but he never came; so that, besides her husband, the mourners were wholly composed of tenants and servants. Isabella was not asked.
The place of Catherine’s interment, to the surprise of the villagers, was neither in the chapel under the carved monument of the Lintons, nor yet by the tombs of her own relations, outside. It was dug on a green slope in a corner of the kirkyard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry-plants have climbed over it from the moor; and peat-mould almost buries it. Her husband lies in the same spot now; and they have each a simple headstone above, and a plain grey block at their feet, to mark the graves.
CHAPTER XVII
That Friday made the last of our fine days for a month. In the evening the weather broke: the wind shifted from south to north-east, and brought rain first, and then sleet and snow. On the morrow one could hardly imagine that there had been three weeks of summer: the primroses and crocuses were hidden under wintry drifts; the larks were silent, the young leaves of the early trees smitten and blackened. And dreary, and chill, and dismal, that morrow did creep over! My master kept his room; I took possession of the lonely parlour, converting it into a nursery: and there I was, sitting with the moaning doll of a child laid on my knee; rocking it to and fro, and watching, meanwhile, the still driving flakes build up the uncurtained window, when the door opened, and some person entered, out of breath and laughing! My anger was greater than my astonishment for a minute. I supposed it one of the maids, and I cried—“Have done! How dare you show your giddiness here? What would Mr. Linton say if he heard you?”
“Excuse me!” answered a familiar voice; “but I know Edgar is in bed, and I cannot stop myself.”
With that the speaker came forward to the fire, panting and holding her hand to her side.
“I have run the whole way from Wuthering Heights!” she continued, after a pause; “except where I’ve flown. I couldn’t count the number of falls I’ve had. Oh, I’m aching all over! Don’t be alarmed! There shall be an explanation as soon as I can give it; only just have the goodness to step out and order the carriage to take me on to Gimmerton, and tell a servant to seek up a few clothes in my wardrobe.”
The intruder was Mrs. Heathcliff. She certainly seemed in no laughing predicament: her hair streamed on her shoulders, dripping with snow and water; she was dressed in the girlish dress she commonly wore, befitting her age more than her position: a low frock with short sleeves, and nothing on either head or neck. The frock was of light silk, and clung to her with wet, and her feet were protected merely by thin slippers; add to this a deep cut under one ear, which only the cold prevented from bleeding profusely, a white face scratched and bruised, and a frame hardly able to support itself through fatigue; and you may fancy my first fright was not much allayed when I had had leisure to examine her.
“My dear young lady,” I exclaimed, “I’ll stir nowhere, and hear nothing, till you have removed every article of your clothes, and put on dry things; and certainly you shall not go to Gimmerton to-night, so it is needless to order the carriage.”
“Certainly I shall,” she said; “walking or riding: yet I’ve no objection to dress myself decently. And—ah, see how it flows down my neck now! The fire does make it smart.”
She insisted on my fulfilling her directions, before she would let me touch her; and not till after the coachman had been instructed to get ready, and a maid set to pack up some necessary attire, did I obtain her consent for binding the wound and helping to change her garments.
“Now, Ellen,” she said, when my task was finished and she was seated in an easy-chair on the hearth, with a cup of tea before her, “you sit down opposite me, and put poor Catherine’s baby away: I don’t like to see it! You mustn’t think I care little for Catherine, because I behaved so foolishly on entering: I’ve cried, too, bitterly—yes, more than any one else has reason to cry. We parted unreconciled, you remember, and I sha’n’t forgive myself. But, for all that, I was not going to sympathise with him—the brute beast! Oh, give me the poker! This is the last thing of his I have about me:” she slipped the gold ring from her third finger, and threw it on the floor. “I’ll smash it!” she continued, striking it with childish spite, “and then I’ll burn it!” and she took and dropped the misused article among the coals. “There! he shall buy another, if he gets me back again. He’d be capable of coming to seek me, to tease Edgar. I dare not stay, lest that notion should possess his wicked head! And besides, Edgar has not been kind, has he? And I won’t come suing for his assistance; nor will I bring him into more trouble. Necessity compelled me to seek shelter here; though, if I had not learned he was out of the way, I’d have halted at the kitchen, washed my face, warmed myself, got you to bring what I wanted, and departed again to anywhere out of the reach of my accursed—of that incarnate goblin! Ah, he was in such a fury! If he had caught me! It’s a pity Earnshaw is not his match in strength: I wouldn’t have run till I’d seen him all but demolished, had Hindley been able to do it!”
“Well, don’t talk so fast, Miss!” I interrupted; “you’ll disorder the handkerchief I have tied round your face, and make the cut bleed again. Drink your tea, and take breath, and give over laughing: laughter is sadly out of place under this roof, and in your condition!”
“An undeniable truth,” she replied. “Listen to that child! It maintains a constant wail—send it out of my hearing for an hour; I sha’n’t stay any longer.”
I rang the bell, and committed it to a servant’s care; and then I inquired what had urged her to escape from Wuthering Heights in such an unlikely plight, and where she meant to go, as she refused remaining with us.
“I ought, and I wished to remain,” answered she, “to cheer Edgar and take care of the baby, for two things, and because the Grange is my right home. But I tell you he wouldn’t let me! Do you think he could bear to see me grow fat and merry—could bear to think that we were tranquil, and not resolve on poisoning our comfort? Now, I have the satisfaction of being sure that he detests me, to the point of its annoying him seriously to have me within ear-shot or eyesight: I notice, when I enter his presence, the muscles of his countenance are involuntarily distorted into an expression of hatred; partly arising from his knowledge of the good causes I have to feel that sentiment for him, and partly from original aversion. It is strong enough to make me feel pretty certain that he would not chase me over England, supposing I contrived a clear escape; and therefore I must get quite away. I’ve recovered from my first desire to be killed by him: I’d rather he’d kill himself! He has extinguished my love effectually, and so I’m at my ease. I can recollect yet how I loved him; and can dimly imagine that I could still be loving him, if—no, no! Even if he had doted on me, the devilish nature would have revealed its existence somehow. Catherine had an awfully perverted taste to esteem him so dearly, knowing him so well. Monster! would that he could be blotted out of creation, and out of my memory!”
“Hush, hush! He’s a human being,” I said. “Be more charitable: there are worse men than he is yet!”
“He’s not a human being,” she retorted; “and he has no claim on my charity. I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death, and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen: and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him: and I would not, though he groaned from this to his dying day, and wept tears of blood for Catherine! No, indeed, indeed, I wouldn’t!” And here Isabella began to cry; but, immediately dashing the water from her lashes, she recommenced. “You asked, what has driven me to flight at last? I was compelled to attempt it, because I had succeeded in rousing his rage a pitch above his malignity. Pulling out the nerves with red hot pincers requires more coolness than knocking on the head. He was worked up to forget the fiendish prudence he boasted of, and proceeded to murderous violence. I experienced pleasure in being able to exasperate him: the sense of pleasure woke my instinct of self-preservation, so I fairly broke free; and if ever I come into his hands again he is welcome to a signal revenge.
“Yesterday, you know, Mr. Earnshaw should have been at the funeral. He kept himself sober for the purpose—tolerably sober: not going to bed mad at six o’clock and getting up drunk at twelve. Consequently, he rose, in suicidal low spirits, as fit for the church as for a dance; and instead, he sat down by the fire and swallowed gin or brandy by tumblerfuls.
“Heathcliff—I shudder to name him! has been a stranger in the house from last Sunday till to-day. Whether the angels have fed him, or his kin beneath, I cannot tell; but he has not eaten a meal with us for nearly a week. He has just come home at dawn, and gone upstairs to his chamber; locking himself in—as if anybody dreamt of coveting his company! There he has continued, praying like a Methodist: only the deity he implored is senseless dust and ashes; and God, when addressed, was curiously confounded with his own black father! After concluding these precious orisons—and they lasted generally till he grew hoarse and his voice was strangled in his throat—he would be off again; always straight down to the Grange! I wonder Edgar did not send for a constable, and give him into custody! For me, grieved as I was about Catherine, it was impossible to avoid regarding this season of deliverance from degrading oppression as a holiday.
“I recovered spirits sufficient to hear Joseph’s eternal lectures without weeping, and to move up and down the house less with the foot of a frightened thief than formerly. You wouldn’t think that I should cry at anything Joseph could say; but he and Hareton are detestable companions. I’d rather sit with Hindley, and hear his awful talk, than with ‘t’ little maister’ and his staunch supporter, that odious old man! When Heathcliff is in, I’m often obliged to seek the kitchen and their society, or starve among the damp uninhabited chambers; when he is not, as was the case this week, I establish a table and chair at one corner of the house fire, and never mind how Mr. Earnshaw may occupy himself; and he does not interfere with my arrangements. He is quieter now than he used to be, if no one provokes him: more sullen and depressed, and less furious. Joseph affirms he’s sure he’s an altered man: that the Lord has touched his heart, and he is saved ‘so as by fire.’ I’m puzzled to detect signs of the favourable change: but it is not my business.
“Yester-evening I sat in my nook reading some old books till late on towards twelve. It seemed so dismal to go upstairs, with the wild snow blowing outside, and my thoughts continually reverting to the kirkyard and the new-made grave! I dared hardly lift my eyes from the page before me, that melancholy scene so instantly usurped its place. Hindley sat opposite, his head leant on his hand; perhaps meditating on the same subject. He had ceased drinking at a point below irrationality, and had neither stirred nor spoken during two or three hours. There was no sound through the house but the moaning wind, which shook the windows every now and then, the faint crackling of the coals, and the click of my snuffers as I removed at intervals the long wick of the candle. Hareton and Joseph were probably fast asleep in bed. It was very, very sad: and while I read I sighed, for it seemed as if all joy had vanished from the world, never to be restored.
“The doleful silence was broken at length by the sound of the kitchen latch: Heathcliff had returned from his watch earlier than usual; owing, I suppose, to the sudden storm. That entrance was fastened, and we heard him coming round to get in by the other. I rose with an irrepressible expression of what I felt on my lips, which induced my companion, who had been staring towards the door, to turn and look at me.
“‘I’ll keep him out five minutes,’ he exclaimed. ‘You won’t object?’
“‘No, you may keep him out the whole night for me,’ I answered. ‘Do! put the key in the lock, and draw the bolts.’
“Earnshaw accomplished this ere his guest reached the front; he then came and brought his chair to the other side of my table, leaning over it, and searching in my eyes for a sympathy with the burning hate that gleamed from his: as he both looked and felt like an assassin, he couldn’t exactly find that; but he discovered enough to encourage him to speak.
“‘You, and I,’ he said, ‘have each a great debt to settle with the man out yonder! If we were neither of us cowards, we might combine to discharge it. Are you as soft as your brother? Are you willing to endure to the last, and not once attempt a repayment?’
“‘I’m weary of enduring now,’ I replied; ‘and I’d be glad of a retaliation that wouldn’t recoil on myself; but treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.’
“‘Treachery and violence are a just return for treachery and violence!’ cried Hindley. ‘Mrs. Heathcliff, I’ll ask you to do nothing; but sit still and be dumb. Tell me now, can you? I’m sure you would have as much pleasure as I in witnessing the conclusion of the fiend’s existence; he’ll be your death unless you overreach him; and he’ll be my ruin. Damn the hellish villain! He knocks at the door as if he were master here already! Promise to hold your tongue, and before that clock strikes—it wants three minutes of one—you’re a free woman!’
“He took the implements which I described to you in my letter from his breast, and would have turned down the candle. I snatched it away, however, and seized his arm.
“‘I’ll not hold my tongue!’ I said; ‘you mustn’t touch him. Let the door remain shut, and be quiet!’
“‘No! I’ve formed my resolution, and by God I’ll execute it!’ cried the desperate being. ‘I’ll do you a kindness in spite of yourself, and Hareton justice! And you needn’t trouble your head to screen me; Catherine is gone. Nobody alive would regret me, or be ashamed, though I cut my throat this minute—and it’s time to make an end!’
“I might as well have struggled with a bear, or reasoned with a lunatic. The only resource left me was to run to a lattice and warn his intended victim of the fate which awaited him.
“‘You’d better seek shelter somewhere else to-night!’ I exclaimed, in rather a triumphant tone. ‘Mr. Earnshaw has a mind to shoot you, if you persist in endeavouring to enter.’
“‘You’d better open the door, you—’ he answered, addressing me by some elegant term that I don’t care to repeat.
“‘I shall not meddle in the matter,’ I retorted again. ‘Come in and get shot, if you please. I’ve done my duty.’
“With that I shut the window and returned to my place by the fire; having too small a stock of hypocrisy at my command to pretend any anxiety for the danger that menaced him. Earnshaw swore passionately at me: affirming that I loved the villain yet; and calling me all sorts of names for the base spirit I evinced. And I, in my secret heart (and conscience never reproached me), thought what a blessing it would be for him should Heathcliff put him out of misery; and what a blessing for me should he send Heathcliff to his right abode! As I sat nursing these reflections, the casement behind me was banged on to the floor by a blow from the latter individual, and his black countenance looked blightingly through. The stanchions stood too close to suffer his shoulders to follow, and I smiled, exulting in my fancied security. His hair and clothes were whitened with snow, and his sharp cannibal teeth, revealed by cold and wrath, gleamed through the dark.
“‘Isabella, let me in, or I’ll make you repent!’ he ‘girned,’ as Joseph calls it.
“‘I cannot commit murder,’ I replied. ‘Mr. Hindley stands sentinel with a knife and loaded pistol.’
“‘Let me in by the kitchen door,’ he said.
“‘Hindley will be there before me,’ I answered: ‘and that’s a poor love of yours that cannot bear a shower of snow! We were left at peace in our beds as long as the summer moon shone, but the moment a blast of winter returns, you must run for shelter! Heathcliff, if I were you, I’d go stretch myself over her grave and die like a faithful dog. The world is surely not worth living in now, is it? You had distinctly impressed on me the idea that Catherine was the whole joy of your life: I can’t imagine how you think of surviving her loss.’
“‘He’s there, is he?’ exclaimed my companion, rushing to the gap. ‘If I can get my arm out I can hit him!’
“I’m afraid, Ellen, you’ll set me down as really wicked; but you don’t know all, so don’t judge. I wouldn’t have aided or abetted an attempt on even his life for anything. Wish that he were dead, I must; and therefore I was fearfully disappointed, and unnerved by terror for the consequences of my taunting speech, when he flung himself on Earnshaw’s weapon and wrenched it from his grasp.
“The charge exploded, and the knife, in springing back, closed into its owner’s wrist. Heathcliff pulled it away by main force, slitting up the flesh as it passed on, and thrust it dripping into his pocket. He then took a stone, struck down the division between two windows, and sprang in. His adversary had fallen senseless with excessive pain and the flow of blood, that gushed from an artery or a large vein. The ruffian kicked and trampled on him, and dashed his head repeatedly against the flags, holding me with one hand, meantime, to prevent me summoning Joseph. He exerted preterhuman self-denial in abstaining from finishing him completely; but getting out of breath, he finally desisted, and dragged the apparently inanimate body on to the settle. There he tore off the sleeve of Earnshaw’s coat, and bound up the wound with brutal roughness; spitting and cursing during the operation as energetically as he had kicked before. Being at liberty, I lost no time in seeking the old servant; who, having gathered by degrees the purport of my hasty tale, hurried below, gasping, as he descended the steps two at once.
“‘What is ther to do, now? what is ther to do, now?’
“‘There’s this to do,’ thundered Heathcliff, ‘that your master’s mad; and should he last another month, I’ll have him to an asylum. And how the devil did you come to fasten me out, you toothless hound? Don’t stand muttering and mumbling there. Come, I’m not going to nurse him. Wash that stuff away; and mind the sparks of your candle—it is more than half brandy!’
“‘And so ye’ve been murthering on him?’ exclaimed Joseph, lifting his hands and eyes in horror. ‘If iver I seed a seeght loike this! May the Lord—’
“Heathcliff gave him a push on to his knees in the middle of the blood, and flung a towel to him; but instead of proceeding to dry it up, he joined his hands and began a prayer, which excited my laughter from its odd phraseology. I was in the condition of mind to be shocked at nothing: in fact, I was as reckless as some malefactors show themselves at the foot of the gallows.
“‘Oh, I forgot you,’ said the tyrant. ‘You shall do that. Down with you. And you conspire with him against me, do you, viper? There, that is work fit for you!’
“He shook me till my teeth rattled, and pitched me beside Joseph, who steadily concluded his supplications, and then rose, vowing he would set off for the Grange directly. Mr. Linton was a magistrate, and though he had fifty wives dead, he should inquire into this. He was so obstinate in his resolution, that Heathcliff deemed it expedient to compel from my lips a recapitulation of what had taken place; standing over me, heaving with malevolence, as I reluctantly delivered the account in answer to his questions. It required a great deal of labour to satisfy the old man that Heathcliff was not the aggressor; especially with my hardly-wrung replies. However, Mr. Earnshaw soon convinced him that he was alive still; Joseph hastened to administer a dose of spirits, and by their succour his master presently regained motion and consciousness. Heathcliff, aware that his opponent was ignorant of the treatment received while insensible, called him deliriously intoxicated; and said he should not notice his atrocious conduct further, but advised him to get to bed. To my joy, he left us, after giving this judicious counsel, and Hindley stretched himself on the hearthstone. I departed to my own room, marvelling that I had escaped so easily.
“This morning, when I came down, about half an hour before noon, Mr. Earnshaw was sitting by the fire, deadly sick; his evil genius, almost as gaunt and ghastly, leant against the chimney. Neither appeared inclined to dine, and, having waited till all was cold on the table, I commenced alone. Nothing hindered me from eating heartily, and I experienced a certain sense of satisfaction and superiority, as, at intervals, I cast a look towards my silent companions, and felt the comfort of a quiet conscience within me. After I had done, I ventured on the unusual liberty of drawing near the fire, going round Earnshaw’s seat, and kneeling in the corner beside him.
“Heathcliff did not glance my way, and I gazed up, and contemplated his features almost as confidently as if they had been turned to stone. His forehead, that I once thought so manly, and that I now think so diabolical, was shaded with a heavy cloud; his basilisk eyes were nearly quenched by sleeplessness, and weeping, perhaps, for the lashes were wet then: his lips devoid of their ferocious sneer, and sealed in an expression of unspeakable sadness. Had it been another, I would have covered my face in the presence of such grief. In his case, I was gratified; and, ignoble as it seems to insult a fallen enemy, I couldn’t miss this chance of sticking in a dart: his weakness was the only time when I could taste the delight of paying wrong for wrong.”
“Fie, fie, Miss!” I interrupted. “One might suppose you had never opened a Bible in your life. If God afflict your enemies, surely that ought to suffice you. It is both mean and presumptuous to add your torture to his!”
“In general I’ll allow that it would be, Ellen,” she continued; “but what misery laid on Heathcliff could content me, unless I have a hand in it? I’d rather he suffered less, if I might cause his sufferings and he might know that I was the cause. Oh, I owe him so much. On only one condition can I hope to forgive him. It is, if I may take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; for every wrench of agony return a wrench: reduce him to my level. As he was the first to injure, make him the first to implore pardon; and then—why then, Ellen, I might show you some generosity. But it is utterly impossible I can ever be revenged, and therefore I cannot forgive him. Hindley wanted some water, and I handed him a glass, and asked him how he was.
“‘Not as ill as I wish,’ he replied. ‘But leaving out my arm, every inch of me is as sore as if I had been fighting with a legion of imps!’
“‘Yes, no wonder,’ was my next remark. ‘Catherine used to boast that she stood between you and bodily harm: she meant that certain persons would not hurt you for fear of offending her. It’s well people don’t really rise from their grave, or, last night, she might have witnessed a repulsive scene! Are not you bruised, and cut over your chest and shoulders?’
“‘I can’t say,’ he answered; ‘but what do you mean? Did he dare to strike me when I was down?’
“‘He trampled on and kicked you, and dashed you on the ground,’ I whispered. ‘And his mouth watered to tear you with his teeth; because he’s only half man: not so much, and the rest fiend.’
“Mr. Earnshaw looked up, like me, to the countenance of our mutual foe; who, absorbed in his anguish, seemed insensible to anything around him: the longer he stood, the plainer his reflections revealed their blackness through his features.
“‘Oh, if God would but give me strength to strangle him in my last agony, I’d go to hell with joy,’ groaned the impatient man, writhing to rise, and sinking back in despair, convinced of his inadequacy for the struggle.
“‘Nay, it’s enough that he has murdered one of you,’ I observed aloud. ‘At the Grange, every one knows your sister would have been living now had it not been for Mr. Heathcliff. After all, it is preferable to be hated than loved by him. When I recollect how happy we were—how happy Catherine was before he came—I’m fit to curse the day.’
“Most likely, Heathcliff noticed more the truth of what was said, than the spirit of the person who said it. His attention was roused, I saw, for his eyes rained down tears among the ashes, and he drew his breath in suffocating sighs. I stared full at him, and laughed scornfully. The clouded windows of hell flashed a moment towards me; the fiend which usually looked out, however, was so dimmed and drowned that I did not fear to hazard another sound of derision.
“‘Get up, and begone out of my sight,’ said the mourner.
“I guessed he uttered those words, at least, though his voice was hardly intelligible.
“‘I beg your pardon,’ I replied. ‘But I loved Catherine too; and her brother requires attendance, which, for her sake, I shall supply. Now that she’s dead, I see her in Hindley: Hindley has exactly her eyes, if you had not tried to gouge them out, and made them black and red; and her—’
“‘Get up, wretched idiot, before I stamp you to death!’ he cried, making a movement that caused me to make one also.
“‘But then,’ I continued, holding myself ready to flee, ‘if poor Catherine had trusted you, and assumed the ridiculous, contemptible, degrading title of Mrs. Heathcliff, she would soon have presented a similar picture! She wouldn’t have borne your abominable behaviour quietly: her detestation and disgust must have found voice.’
“The back of the settle and Earnshaw’s person interposed between me and him; so instead of endeavouring to reach me, he snatched a dinner-knife from the table and flung it at my head. It struck beneath my ear, and stopped the sentence I was uttering; but, pulling it out, I sprang to the door and delivered another; which I hope went a little deeper than his missile. The last glimpse I caught of him was a furious rush on his part, checked by the embrace of his host; and both fell locked together on the hearth. In my flight through the kitchen I bid Joseph speed to his master; I knocked over Hareton, who was hanging a litter of puppies from a chair-back in the doorway; and, blessed as a soul escaped from purgatory, I bounded, leaped, and flew down the steep road; then, quitting its windings, shot direct across the moor, rolling over banks, and wading through marshes: precipitating myself, in fact, towards the beacon-light of the Grange. And far rather would I be condemned to a perpetual dwelling in the infernal regions than, even for one night, abide beneath the roof of Wuthering Heights again.”
Isabella ceased speaking, and took a drink of tea; then she rose, and bidding me put on her bonnet, and a great shawl I had brought, and turning a deaf ear to my entreaties for her to remain another hour, she stepped on to a chair, kissed Edgar’s and Catherine’s portraits, bestowed a similar salute on me, and descended to the carriage, accompanied by Fanny, who yelped wild with joy at recovering her mistress. She was driven away, never to revisit this neighbourhood: but a regular correspondence was established between her and my master when things were more settled. I believe her new abode was in the south, near London; there she had a son born a few months subsequent to her escape. He was christened Linton, and, from the first, she reported him to be an ailing, peevish creature.
Mr. Heathcliff, meeting me one day in the village, inquired where she lived. I refused to tell. He remarked that it was not of any moment, only she must beware of coming to her brother: she should not be with him, if he had to keep her himself. Though I would give no information, he discovered, through some of the other servants, both her place of residence and the existence of the child. Still, he didn’t molest her: for which forbearance she might thank his aversion, I suppose. He often asked about the infant, when he saw me; and on hearing its name, smiled grimly, and observed: “They wish me to hate it too, do they?”
“I don’t think they wish you to know anything about it,” I answered.
“But I’ll have it,” he said, “when I want it. They may reckon on that!”
Fortunately its mother died before the time arrived; some thirteen years after the decease of Catherine, when Linton was twelve, or a little more.
On the day succeeding Isabella’s unexpected visit I had no opportunity of speaking to my master: he shunned conversation, and was fit for discussing nothing. When I could get him to listen, I saw it pleased him that his sister had left her husband; whom he abhorred with an intensity which the mildness of his nature would scarcely seem to allow. So deep and sensitive was his aversion, that he refrained from going anywhere where he was likely to see or hear of Heathcliff. Grief, and that together, transformed him into a complete hermit: he threw up his office of magistrate, ceased even to attend church, avoided the village on all occasions, and spent a life of entire seclusion within the limits of his park and grounds; only varied by solitary rambles on the moors, and visits to the grave of his wife, mostly at evening, or early morning before other wanderers were abroad. But he was too good to be thoroughly unhappy long. He didn’t pray for Catherine’s soul to haunt him. Time brought resignation, and a melancholy sweeter than common joy. He recalled her memory with ardent, tender love, and hopeful aspiring to the better world; where he doubted not she was gone.
And he had earthly consolation and affections also. For a few days, I said, he seemed regardless of the puny successor to the departed: that coldness melted as fast as snow in April, and ere the tiny thing could stammer a word or totter a step it wielded a despot’s sceptre in his heart. It was named Catherine; but he never called it the name in full, as he had never called the first Catherine short: probably because Heathcliff had a habit of doing so. The little one was always Cathy: it formed to him a distinction from the mother, and yet a connection with her; and his attachment sprang from its relation to her, far more than from its being his own.
I used to draw a comparison between him and Hindley Earnshaw, and perplex myself to explain satisfactorily why their conduct was so opposite in similar circumstances. They had both been fond husbands, and were both attached to their children; and I could not see how they shouldn’t both have taken the same road, for good or evil. But, I thought in my mind, Hindley, with apparently the stronger head, has shown himself sadly the worse and the weaker man. When his ship struck, the captain abandoned his post; and the crew, instead of trying to save her, rushed into riot and confusion, leaving no hope for their luckless vessel. Linton, on the contrary, displayed the true courage of a loyal and faithful soul: he trusted God; and God comforted him. One hoped, and the other despaired: they chose their own lots, and were righteously doomed to endure them. But you’ll not want to hear my moralising, Mr. Lockwood; you’ll judge, as well as I can, all these things: at least, you’ll think you will, and that’s the same. The end of Earnshaw was what might have been expected; it followed fast on his sister’s: there were scarcely six months between them. We, at the Grange, never got a very succinct account of his state preceding it; all that I did learn was on occasion of going to aid in the preparations for the funeral. Mr. Kenneth came to announce the event to my master.
“Well, Nelly,” said he, riding into the yard one morning, too early not to alarm me with an instant presentiment of bad news, “it’s yours and my turn to go into mourning at present. Who’s given us the slip now, do you think?”
“Who?” I asked in a flurry.
“Why, guess!” he returned, dismounting, and slinging his bridle on a hook by the door. “And nip up the corner of your apron: I’m certain you’ll need it.”
“Not Mr. Heathcliff, surely?” I exclaimed.
“What! would you have tears for him?” said the doctor. “No, Heathcliff’s a tough young fellow: he looks blooming to-day. I’ve just seen him. He’s rapidly regaining flesh since he lost his better half.”
“Who is it, then, Mr. Kenneth?” I repeated impatiently.
“Hindley Earnshaw! Your old friend Hindley,” he replied, “and my wicked gossip: though he’s been too wild for me this long while. There! I said we should draw water. But cheer up! He died true to his character: drunk as a lord. Poor lad! I’m sorry, too. One can’t help missing an old companion: though he had the worst tricks with him that ever man imagined, and has done me many a rascally turn. He’s barely twenty-seven, it seems; that’s your own age: who would have thought you were born in one year?”
I confess this blow was greater to me than the shock of Mrs. Linton’s death: ancient associations lingered round my heart; I sat down in the porch and wept as for a blood relation, desiring Mr. Kenneth to get another servant to introduce him to the master. I could not hinder myself from pondering on the question—“Had he had fair play?” Whatever I did, that idea would bother me: it was so tiresomely pertinacious that I resolved on requesting leave to go to Wuthering Heights, and assist in the last duties to the dead. Mr. Linton was extremely reluctant to consent, but I pleaded eloquently for the friendless condition in which he lay; and I said my old master and foster-brother had a claim on my services as strong as his own. Besides, I reminded him that the child Hareton was his wife’s nephew, and, in the absence of nearer kin, he ought to act as its guardian; and he ought to and must inquire how the property was left, and look over the concerns of his brother-in-law. He was unfit for attending to such matters then, but he bid me speak to his lawyer; and at length permitted me to go. His lawyer had been Earnshaw’s also: I called at the village, and asked him to accompany me. He shook his head, and advised that Heathcliff should be let alone; affirming, if the truth were known, Hareton would be found little else than a beggar.
“His father died in debt,” he said; “the whole property is mortgaged, and the sole chance for the natural heir is to allow him an opportunity of creating some interest in the creditor’s heart, that he may be inclined to deal leniently towards him.”
When I reached the Heights, I explained that I had come to see everything carried on decently; and Joseph, who appeared in sufficient distress, expressed satisfaction at my presence. Mr. Heathcliff said he did not perceive that I was wanted; but I might stay and order the arrangements for the funeral, if I chose.
“Correctly,” he remarked, “that fool’s body should be buried at the cross-roads, without ceremony of any kind. I happened to leave him ten minutes yesterday afternoon, and in that interval he fastened the two doors of the house against me, and he has spent the night in drinking himself to death deliberately! We broke in this morning, for we heard him snorting like a horse; and there he was, laid over the settle: flaying and scalping would not have wakened him. I sent for Kenneth, and he came; but not till the beast had changed into carrion: he was both dead and cold, and stark; and so you’ll allow it was useless making more stir about him!”
The old servant confirmed this statement, but muttered:
“I’d rayther he’d goan hisseln for t’ doctor! I sud ha’ taen tent o’ t’ maister better nor him—and he warn’t deead when I left, naught o’ t’ soart!”
I insisted on the funeral being respectable. Mr. Heathcliff said I might have my own way there too: only, he desired me to remember that the money for the whole affair came out of his pocket. He maintained a hard, careless deportment, indicative of neither joy nor sorrow: if anything, it expressed a flinty gratification at a piece of difficult work successfully executed. I observed once, indeed, something like exultation in his aspect: it was just when the people were bearing the coffin from the house. He had the hypocrisy to represent a mourner: and previous to following with Hareton, he lifted the unfortunate child on to the table and muttered, with peculiar gusto, “Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!” The unsuspecting thing was pleased at this speech: he played with Heathcliff’s whiskers, and stroked his cheek; but I divined its meaning, and observed tartly, “That boy must go back with me to Thrushcross Grange, sir. There is nothing in the world less yours than he is!”
“Does Linton say so?” he demanded.
“Of course—he has ordered me to take him,” I replied.
“Well,” said the scoundrel, “we’ll not argue the subject now: but I have a fancy to try my hand at rearing a young one; so intimate to your master that I must supply the place of this with my own, if he attempt to remove it. I don’t engage to let Hareton go undisputed; but I’ll be pretty sure to make the other come! Remember to tell him.”
This hint was enough to bind our hands. I repeated its substance on my return; and Edgar Linton, little interested at the commencement, spoke no more of interfering. I’m not aware that he could have done it to any purpose, had he been ever so willing.
The guest was now the master of Wuthering Heights: he held firm possession, and proved to the attorney—who, in his turn, proved it to Mr. Linton—that Earnshaw had mortgaged every yard of land he owned for cash to supply his mania for gaming; and he, Heathcliff, was the mortgagee. In that manner Hareton, who should now be the first gentleman in the neighbourhood, was reduced to a state of complete dependence on his father’s inveterate enemy; and lives in his own house as a servant, deprived of the advantage of wages: quite unable to right himself, because of his friendlessness, and his ignorance that he has been wronged.
CHAPTER XVIII
The twelve years, continued Mrs. Dean, following that dismal period were the happiest of my life: my greatest troubles in their passage rose from our little lady’s trifling illnesses, which she had to experience in common with all children, rich and poor. For the rest, after the first six months, she grew like a larch, and could walk and talk too, in her own way, before the heath blossomed a second time over Mrs. Linton’s dust. She was the most winning thing that ever brought sunshine into a desolate house: a real beauty in face, with the Earnshaws’ handsome dark eyes, but the Lintons’ fair skin and small features, and yellow curling hair. Her spirit was high, though not rough, and qualified by a heart sensitive and lively to excess in its affections. That capacity for intense attachments reminded me of her mother: still she did not resemble her: for she could be soft and mild as a dove, and she had a gentle voice and pensive expression: her anger was never furious; her love never fierce: it was deep and tender. However, it must be acknowledged, she had faults to foil her gifts. A propensity to be saucy was one; and a perverse will, that indulged children invariably acquire, whether they be good tempered or cross. If a servant chanced to vex her, it was always—“I shall tell papa!” And if he reproved her, even by a look, you would have thought it a heart-breaking business: I don’t believe he ever did speak a harsh word to her. He took her education entirely on himself, and made it an amusement. Fortunately, curiosity and a quick intellect made her an apt scholar: she learned rapidly and eagerly, and did honour to his teaching.
Till she reached the age of thirteen she had not once been beyond the range of the park by herself. Mr. Linton would take her with him a mile or so outside, on rare occasions; but he trusted her to no one else. Gimmerton was an unsubstantial name in her ears; the chapel, the only building she had approached or entered, except her own home. Wuthering Heights and Mr. Heathcliff did not exist for her: she was a perfect recluse; and, apparently, perfectly contented. Sometimes, indeed, while surveying the country from her nursery window, she would observe—
“Ellen, how long will it be before I can walk to the top of those hills? I wonder what lies on the other side—is it the sea?”
“No, Miss Cathy,” I would answer; “it is hills again, just like these.”
“And what are those golden rocks like when you stand under them?” she once asked.
The abrupt descent of Penistone Crags particularly attracted her notice; especially when the setting sun shone on it and the topmost heights, and the whole extent of landscape besides lay in shadow. I explained that they were bare masses of stone, with hardly enough earth in their clefts to nourish a stunted tree.
“And why are they bright so long after it is evening here?” she pursued.
“Because they are a great deal higher up than we are,” replied I; “you could not climb them, they are too high and steep. In winter the frost is always there before it comes to us; and deep into summer I have found snow under that black hollow on the north-east side!”
“Oh, you have been on them!” she cried gleefully. “Then I can go, too, when I am a woman. Has papa been, Ellen?”
“Papa would tell you, Miss,” I answered, hastily, “that they are not worth the trouble of visiting. The moors, where you ramble with him, are much nicer; and Thrushcross Park is the finest place in the world.”
“But I know the park, and I don’t know those,” she murmured to herself. “And I should delight to look round me from the brow of that tallest point: my little pony Minny shall take me some time.”
One of the maids mentioning the Fairy Cave, quite turned her head with a desire to fulfil this project: she teased Mr. Linton about it; and he promised she should have the journey when she got older. But Miss Catherine measured her age by months, and, “Now, am I old enough to go to Penistone Crags?” was the constant question in her mouth. The road thither wound close by Wuthering Heights. Edgar had not the heart to pass it; so she received as constantly the answer, “Not yet, love: not yet.”
I said Mrs. Heathcliff lived above a dozen years after quitting her husband. Her family were of a delicate constitution: she and Edgar both lacked the ruddy health that you will generally meet in these parts. What her last illness was, I am not certain: I conjecture, they died of the same thing, a kind of fever, slow at its commencement, but incurable, and rapidly consuming life towards the close. She wrote to inform her brother of the probable conclusion of a four-months’ indisposition under which she had suffered, and entreated him to come to her, if possible; for she had much to settle, and she wished to bid him adieu, and deliver Linton safely into his hands. Her hope was that Linton might be left with him, as he had been with her: his father, she would fain convince herself, had no desire to assume the burden of his maintenance or education. My master hesitated not a moment in complying with her request: reluctant as he was to leave home at ordinary calls, he flew to answer this; commending Catherine to my peculiar vigilance, in his absence, with reiterated orders that she must not wander out of the park, even under my escort: he did not calculate on her going unaccompanied.
He was away three weeks. The first day or two my charge sat in a corner of the library, too sad for either reading or playing: in that quiet state she caused me little trouble; but it was succeeded by an interval of impatient, fretful weariness; and being too busy, and too old then, to run up and down amusing her, I hit on a method by which she might entertain herself. I used to send her on her travels round the grounds—now on foot, and now on a pony; indulging her with a patient audience of all her real and imaginary adventures when she returned.
The summer shone in full prime; and she took such a taste for this solitary rambling that she often contrived to remain out from breakfast till tea; and then the evenings were spent in recounting her fanciful tales. I did not fear her breaking bounds; because the gates were generally locked, and I thought she would scarcely venture forth alone, if they had stood wide open. Unluckily, my confidence proved misplaced. Catherine came to me, one morning, at eight o’clock, and said she was that day an Arabian merchant, going to cross the Desert with his caravan; and I must give her plenty of provision for herself and beasts: a horse, and three camels, personated by a large hound and a couple of pointers. I got together good store of dainties, and slung them in a basket on one side of the saddle; and she sprang up as gay as a fairy, sheltered by her wide-brimmed hat and gauze veil from the July sun, and trotted off with a merry laugh, mocking my cautious counsel to avoid galloping, and come back early. The naughty thing never made her appearance at tea. One traveller, the hound, being an old dog and fond of its ease, returned; but neither Cathy, nor the pony, nor the two pointers were visible in any direction: I despatched emissaries down this path, and that path, and at last went wandering in search of her myself. There was a labourer working at a fence round a plantation, on the borders of the grounds. I inquired of him if he had seen our young lady.
“I saw her at morn,” he replied: “she would have me to cut her a hazel switch, and then she leapt her Galloway over the hedge yonder, where it is lowest, and galloped out of sight.”
You may guess how I felt at hearing this news. It struck me directly she must have started for Penistone Crags. “What will become of her?” I ejaculated, pushing through a gap which the man was repairing, and making straight to the high-road. I walked as if for a wager, mile after mile, till a turn brought me in view of the Heights; but no Catherine could I detect, far or near. The Crags lie about a mile and a half beyond Mr. Heathcliff’s place, and that is four from the Grange, so I began to fear night would fall ere I could reach them. “And what if she should have slipped in clambering among them,” I reflected, “and been killed, or broken some of her bones?” My suspense was truly painful; and, at first, it gave me delightful relief to observe, in hurrying by the farmhouse, Charlie, the fiercest of the pointers, lying under a window, with swelled head and bleeding ear. I opened the wicket and ran to the door, knocking vehemently for admittance. A woman whom I knew, and who formerly lived at Gimmerton, answered: she had been servant there since the death of Mr. Earnshaw.
“Ah,” said she, “you are come a-seeking your little mistress! Don’t be frightened. She’s here safe: but I’m glad it isn’t the master.”
“He is not at home then, is he?” I panted, quite breathless with quick walking and alarm.
“No, no,” she replied: “both he and Joseph are off, and I think they won’t return this hour or more. Step in and rest you a bit.”
I entered, and beheld my stray lamb seated on the hearth, rocking herself in a little chair that had been her mother’s when a child. Her hat was hung against the wall, and she seemed perfectly at home, laughing and chattering, in the best spirits imaginable, to Hareton—now a great, strong lad of eighteen—who stared at her with considerable curiosity and astonishment: comprehending precious little of the fluent succession of remarks and questions which her tongue never ceased pouring forth.
“Very well, Miss!” I exclaimed, concealing my joy under an angry countenance. “This is your last ride, till papa comes back. I’ll not trust you over the threshold again, you naughty, naughty girl!”
“Aha, Ellen!” she cried, gaily, jumping up and running to my side. “I shall have a pretty story to tell to-night; and so you’ve found me out. Have you ever been here in your life before?”
“Put that hat on, and home at once,” said I. “I’m dreadfully grieved at you, Miss Cathy: you’ve done extremely wrong! It’s no use pouting and crying: that won’t repay the trouble I’ve had, scouring the country after you. To think how Mr. Linton charged me to keep you in; and you stealing off so! It shows you are a cunning little fox, and nobody will put faith in you any more.”
“What have I done?” sobbed she, instantly checked. “Papa charged me nothing: he’ll not scold me, Ellen—he’s never cross, like you!”
“Come, come!” I repeated. “I’ll tie the riband. Now, let us have no petulance. Oh, for shame! You thirteen years old, and such a baby!”
This exclamation was caused by her pushing the hat from her head, and retreating to the chimney out of my reach.
“Nay,” said the servant, “don’t be hard on the bonny lass, Mrs. Dean. We made her stop: she’d fain have ridden forwards, afeard you should be uneasy. Hareton offered to go with her, and I thought he should: it’s a wild road over the hills.”
Hareton, during the discussion, stood with his hands in his pockets, too awkward to speak; though he looked as if he did not relish my intrusion.
“How long am I to wait?” I continued, disregarding the woman’s interference. “It will be dark in ten minutes. Where is the pony, Miss Cathy? And where is Phoenix? I shall leave you, unless you be quick; so please yourself.”
“The pony is in the yard,” she replied, “and Phoenix is shut in there. He’s bitten—and so is Charlie. I was going to tell you all about it; but you are in a bad temper, and don’t deserve to hear.”
I picked up her hat, and approached to reinstate it; but perceiving that the people of the house took her part, she commenced capering round the room; and on my giving chase, ran like a mouse over and under and behind the furniture, rendering it ridiculous for me to pursue. Hareton and the woman laughed, and she joined them, and waxed more impertinent still; till I cried, in great irritation,—“Well, Miss Cathy, if you were aware whose house this is you’d be glad enough to get out.”
“It’s your father’s, isn’t it?” said she, turning to Hareton.
“Nay,” he replied, looking down, and blushing bashfully.
He could not stand a steady gaze from her eyes, though they were just his own.
“Whose then—your master’s?” she asked.
He coloured deeper, with a different feeling, muttered an oath, and turned away.
“Who is his master?” continued the tiresome girl, appealing to me. “He talked about ‘our house,’ and ‘our folk.’ I thought he had been the owner’s son. And he never said Miss: he should have done, shouldn’t he, if he’s a servant?”
Hareton grew black as a thunder-cloud at this childish speech. I silently shook my questioner, and at last succeeded in equipping her for departure.
“Now, get my horse,” she said, addressing her unknown kinsman as she would one of the stable-boys at the Grange. “And you may come with me. I want to see where the goblin-hunter rises in the marsh, and to hear about the fairishes, as you call them: but make haste! What’s the matter? Get my horse, I say.”
“I’ll see thee damned before I be thy servant!” growled the lad.
“You’ll see me what?” asked Catherine in surprise.
“Damned—thou saucy witch!” he replied.
“There, Miss Cathy! you see you have got into pretty company,” I interposed. “Nice words to be used to a young lady! Pray don’t begin to dispute with him. Come, let us seek for Minny ourselves, and begone.”
“But, Ellen,” cried she, staring fixed in astonishment, “how dare he speak so to me? Mustn’t he be made to do as I ask him? You wicked creature, I shall tell papa what you said.—Now, then!”
Hareton did not appear to feel this threat; so the tears sprang into her eyes with indignation. “You bring the pony,” she exclaimed, turning to the woman, “and let my dog free this moment!”
“Softly, Miss,” answered the addressed. “You’ll lose nothing by being civil. Though Mr. Hareton, there, be not the master’s son, he’s your cousin: and I was never hired to serve you.”
“He my cousin!” cried Cathy, with a scornful laugh.
“Yes, indeed,” responded her reprover.
“Oh, Ellen! don’t let them say such things,” she pursued in great trouble. “Papa is gone to fetch my cousin from London: my cousin is a gentleman’s son. That my—” she stopped, and wept outright; upset at the bare notion of relationship with such a clown.
“Hush, hush!” I whispered; “people can have many cousins and of all sorts, Miss Cathy, without being any the worse for it; only they needn’t keep their company, if they be disagreeable and bad.”
“He’s not—he’s not my cousin, Ellen!” she went on, gathering fresh grief from reflection, and flinging herself into my arms for refuge from the idea.
I was much vexed at her and the servant for their mutual revelations; having no doubt of Linton’s approaching arrival, communicated by the former, being reported to Mr. Heathcliff; and feeling as confident that Catherine’s first thought on her father’s return would be to seek an explanation of the latter’s assertion concerning her rude-bred kindred. Hareton, recovering from his disgust at being taken for a servant, seemed moved by her distress; and, having fetched the pony round to the door, he took, to propitiate her, a fine crooked-legged terrier whelp from the kennel, and putting it into her hand, bid her whist! for he meant nought. Pausing in her lamentations, she surveyed him with a glance of awe and horror, then burst forth anew.
I could scarcely refrain from smiling at this antipathy to the poor fellow; who was a well-made, athletic youth, good-looking in features, and stout and healthy, but attired in garments befitting his daily occupations of working on the farm and lounging among the moors after rabbits and game. Still, I thought I could detect in his physiognomy a mind owning better qualities than his father ever possessed. Good things lost amid a wilderness of weeds, to be sure, whose rankness far over-topped their neglected growth; yet, notwithstanding, evidence of a wealthy soil, that might yield luxuriant crops under other and favourable circumstances. Mr. Heathcliff, I believe, had not treated him physically ill; thanks to his fearless nature, which offered no temptation to that course of oppression: he had none of the timid susceptibility that would have given zest to ill-treatment, in Heathcliff’s judgment. He appeared to have bent his malevolence on making him a brute: he was never taught to read or write; never rebuked for any bad habit which did not annoy his keeper; never led a single step towards virtue, or guarded by a single precept against vice. And from what I heard, Joseph contributed much to his deterioration, by a narrow-minded partiality which prompted him to flatter and pet him, as a boy, because he was the head of the old family. And as he had been in the habit of accusing Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, when children, of putting the master past his patience, and compelling him to seek solace in drink by what he termed their “offald ways,” so at present he laid the whole burden of Hareton’s faults on the shoulders of the usurper of his property. If the lad swore, he wouldn’t correct him: nor however culpably he behaved. It gave Joseph satisfaction, apparently, to watch him go the worst lengths: he allowed that the lad was ruined: that his soul was abandoned to perdition; but then he reflected that Heathcliff must answer for it. Hareton’s blood would be required at his hands; and there lay immense consolation in that thought. Joseph had instilled into him a pride of name, and of his lineage; he would, had he dared, have fostered hate between him and the present owner of the Heights: but his dread of that owner amounted to superstition; and he confined his feelings regarding him to muttered innuendoes and private comminations. I don’t pretend to be intimately acquainted with the mode of living customary in those days at Wuthering Heights: I only speak from hearsay; for I saw little. The villagers affirmed Mr. Heathcliff was near, and a cruel hard landlord to his tenants; but the house, inside, had regained its ancient aspect of comfort under female management, and the scenes of riot common in Hindley’s time were not now enacted within its walls. The master was too gloomy to seek companionship with any people, good or bad; and he is yet.
This, however, is not making progress with my story. Miss Cathy rejected the peace-offering of the terrier, and demanded her own dogs, Charlie and Phoenix. They came limping and hanging their heads; and we set out for home, sadly out of sorts, every one of us. I could not wring from my little lady how she had spent the day; except that, as I supposed, the goal of her pilgrimage was Penistone Crags; and she arrived without adventure to the gate of the farmhouse, when Hareton happened to issue forth, attended by some canine followers, who attacked her train. They had a smart battle, before their owners could separate them: that formed an introduction. Catherine told Hareton who she was, and where she was going; and asked him to show her the way: finally, beguiling him to accompany her. He opened the mysteries of the Fairy Cave, and twenty other queer places. But, being in disgrace, I was not favoured with a description of the interesting objects she saw. I could gather, however, that her guide had been a favourite till she hurt his feelings by addressing him as a servant; and Heathcliff’s housekeeper hurt hers by calling him her cousin. Then the language he had held to her rankled in her heart; she who was always “love,” and “darling,” and “queen,” and “angel,” with everybody at the Grange, to be insulted so shockingly by a stranger! She did not comprehend it; and hard work I had to obtain a promise that she would not lay the grievance before her father. I explained how he objected to the whole household at the Heights, and how sorry he would be to find she had been there; but I insisted most on the fact, that if she revealed my negligence of his orders, he would perhaps be so angry that I should have to leave; and Cathy couldn’t bear that prospect: she pledged her word, and kept it for my sake. After all, she was a sweet little girl.
CHAPTER XIX
A letter, edged with black, announced the day of my master’s return. Isabella was dead; and he wrote to bid me get mourning for his daughter, and arrange a room, and other accommodations, for his youthful nephew. Catherine ran wild with joy at the idea of welcoming her father back; and indulged most sanguine anticipations of the innumerable excellencies of her “real” cousin. The evening of their expected arrival came. Since early morning she had been busy ordering her own small affairs; and now attired in her new black frock—poor thing! her aunt’s death impressed her with no definite sorrow—she obliged me, by constant worrying, to walk with her down through the grounds to meet them.
“Linton is just six months younger than I am,” she chattered, as we strolled leisurely over the swells and hollows of mossy turf, under shadow of the trees. “How delightful it will be to have him for a playfellow! Aunt Isabella sent papa a beautiful lock of his hair; it was lighter than mine—more flaxen, and quite as fine. I have it carefully preserved in a little glass box; and I’ve often thought what a pleasure it would be to see its owner. Oh! I am happy—and papa, dear, dear papa! Come, Ellen, let us run! come, run.”
She ran, and returned and ran again, many times before my sober footsteps reached the gate, and then she seated herself on the grassy bank beside the path, and tried to wait patiently; but that was impossible: she couldn’t be still a minute.
“How long they are!” she exclaimed. “Ah, I see some dust on the road—they are coming! No! When will they be here? May we not go a little way—half a mile, Ellen, only just half a mile? Do say yes, to that clump of birches at the turn!”
I refused staunchly. At length her suspense was ended: the travelling carriage rolled in sight. Miss Cathy shrieked and stretched out her arms as soon as she caught her father’s face looking from the window. He descended, nearly as eager as herself; and a considerable interval elapsed ere they had a thought to spare for any but themselves. While they exchanged caresses I took a peep in to see after Linton. He was asleep in a corner, wrapped in a warm, fur-lined cloak, as if it had been winter. A pale, delicate, effeminate boy, who might have been taken for my master’s younger brother, so strong was the resemblance: but there was a sickly peevishness in his aspect that Edgar Linton never had. The latter saw me looking; and having shaken hands, advised me to close the door, and leave him undisturbed; for the journey had fatigued him. Cathy would fain have taken one glance, but her father told her to come, and they walked together up the park, while I hastened before to prepare the servants.
“Now, darling,” said Mr. Linton, addressing his daughter, as they halted at the bottom of the front steps: “your cousin is not so strong or so merry as you are, and he has lost his mother, remember, a very short time since; therefore, don’t expect him to play and run about with you directly. And don’t harass him much by talking: let him be quiet this evening, at least, will you?”
“Yes, yes, papa,” answered Catherine: “but I do want to see him; and he hasn’t once looked out.”
The carriage stopped; and the sleeper being roused, was lifted to the ground by his uncle.
“This is your cousin Cathy, Linton,” he said, putting their little hands together. “She’s fond of you already; and mind you don’t grieve her by crying to-night. Try to be cheerful now; the travelling is at an end, and you have nothing to do but rest and amuse yourself as you please.”
“Let me go to bed, then,” answered the boy, shrinking from Catherine’s salute; and he put his fingers to his eyes to remove incipient tears.
“Come, come, there’s a good child,” I whispered, leading him in. “You’ll make her weep too—see how sorry she is for you!”
I do not know whether it was sorrow for him, but his cousin put on as sad a countenance as himself, and returned to her father. All three entered, and mounted to the library, where tea was laid ready. I proceeded to remove Linton’s cap and mantle, and placed him on a chair by the table; but he was no sooner seated than he began to cry afresh. My master inquired what was the matter.
“I can’t sit on a chair,” sobbed the boy.
“Go to the sofa, then, and Ellen shall bring you some tea,” answered his uncle patiently.
He had been greatly tried, during the journey, I felt convinced, by his fretful ailing charge. Linton slowly trailed himself off, and lay down. Cathy carried a footstool and her cup to his side. At first she sat silent; but that could not last: she had resolved to make a pet of her little cousin, as she would have him to be; and she commenced stroking his curls, and kissing his cheek, and offering him tea in her saucer, like a baby. This pleased him, for he was not much better: he dried his eyes, and lightened into a faint smile.
“Oh, he’ll do very well,” said the master to me, after watching them a minute. “Very well, if we can keep him, Ellen. The company of a child of his own age will instil new spirit into him soon, and by wishing for strength he’ll gain it.”
“Ay, if we can keep him!” I mused to myself; and sore misgivings came over me that there was slight hope of that. And then, I thought, how ever will that weakling live at Wuthering Heights? Between his father and Hareton, what playmates and instructors they’ll be. Our doubts were presently decided—even earlier than I expected. I had just taken the children upstairs, after tea was finished, and seen Linton asleep—he would not suffer me to leave him till that was the case—I had come down, and was standing by the table in the hall, lighting a bedroom candle for Mr. Edgar, when a maid stepped out of the kitchen and informed me that Mr. Heathcliff’s servant Joseph was at the door, and wished to speak with the master.
“I shall ask him what he wants first,” I said, in considerable trepidation. “A very unlikely hour to be troubling people, and the instant they have returned from a long journey. I don’t think the master can see him.”
Joseph had advanced through the kitchen as I uttered these words, and now presented himself in the hall. He was donned in his Sunday garments, with his most sanctimonious and sourest face, and, holding his hat in one hand, and his stick in the other, he proceeded to clean his shoes on the mat.
“Good-evening, Joseph,” I said, coldly. “What business brings you here to-night?”
“It’s Maister Linton I mun spake to,” he answered, waving me disdainfully aside.
“Mr. Linton is going to bed; unless you have something particular to say, I’m sure he won’t hear it now,” I continued. “You had better sit down in there, and entrust your message to me.”
“Which is his rahm?” pursued the fellow, surveying the range of closed doors.
I perceived he was bent on refusing my mediation, so very reluctantly I went up to the library, and announced the unseasonable visitor, advising that he should be dismissed till next day. Mr. Linton had no time to empower me to do so, for Joseph mounted close at my heels, and, pushing into the apartment, planted himself at the far side of the table, with his two fists clapped on the head of his stick, and began in an elevated tone, as if anticipating opposition—
“Hathecliff has sent me for his lad, and I munn’t goa back ’bout him.”
Edgar Linton was silent a minute; an expression of exceeding sorrow overcast his features: he would have pitied the child on his own account; but, recalling Isabella’s hopes and fears, and anxious wishes for her son, and her commendations of him to his care, he grieved bitterly at the prospect of yielding him up, and searched in his heart how it might be avoided. No plan offered itself: the very exhibition of any desire to keep him would have rendered the claimant more peremptory: there was nothing left but to resign him. However, he was not going to rouse him from his sleep.
“Tell Mr. Heathcliff,” he answered calmly, “that his son shall come to Wuthering Heights to-morrow. He is in bed, and too tired to go the distance now. You may also tell him that the mother of Linton desired him to remain under my guardianship; and, at present, his health is very precarious.”
“Noa!” said Joseph, giving a thud with his prop on the floor, and assuming an authoritative air. “Noa! that means naught. Hathecliff maks noa ’count o’ t’ mother, nor ye norther; but he’ll hev his lad; und I mun tak’ him—soa now ye knaw!”
“You shall not to-night!” answered Linton decisively. “Walk down stairs at once, and repeat to your master what I have said. Ellen, show him down. Go—”
And, aiding the indignant elder with a lift by the arm, he rid the room of him and closed the door.
“Varrah weell!” shouted Joseph, as he slowly drew off. “To-morn, he’s come hisseln, and thrust him out, if ye darr!”
CHAPTER XX
To obviate the danger of this threat being fulfilled, Mr. Linton commissioned me to take the boy home early, on Catherine’s pony; and, said he—“As we shall now have no influence over his destiny, good or bad, you must say nothing of where he is gone to my daughter: she cannot associate with him hereafter, and it is better for her to remain in ignorance of his proximity; lest she should be restless, and anxious to visit the Heights. Merely tell her his father sent for him suddenly, and he has been obliged to leave us.”
Linton was very reluctant to be roused from his bed at five o’clock, and astonished to be informed that he must prepare for further travelling; but I softened off the matter by stating that he was going to spend some time with his father, Mr. Heathcliff, who wished to see him so much, he did not like to defer the pleasure till he should recover from his late journey.
“My father!” he cried, in strange perplexity. “Mamma never told me I had a father. Where does he live? I’d rather stay with uncle.”
“He lives a little distance from the Grange,” I replied; “just beyond those hills: not so far, but you may walk over here when you get hearty. And you should be glad to go home, and to see him. You must try to love him, as you did your mother, and then he will love you.”
“But why have I not heard of him before?” asked Linton. “Why didn’t mamma and he live together, as other people do?”
“He had business to keep him in the north,” I answered, “and your mother’s health required her to reside in the south.”
“And why didn’t mamma speak to me about him?” persevered the child. “She often talked of uncle, and I learnt to love him long ago. How am I to love papa? I don’t know him.”
“Oh, all children love their parents,” I said. “Your mother, perhaps, thought you would want to be with him if she mentioned him often to you. Let us make haste. An early ride on such a beautiful morning is much preferable to an hour’s more sleep.”
“Is she to go with us,” he demanded, “the little girl I saw yesterday?”
“Not now,” replied I.
“Is uncle?” he continued.
“No, I shall be your companion there,” I said.
Linton sank back on his pillow and fell into a brown study.
“I won’t go without uncle,” he cried at length: “I can’t tell where you mean to take me.”
I attempted to persuade him of the naughtiness of showing reluctance to meet his father; still he obstinately resisted any progress towards dressing, and I had to call for my master’s assistance in coaxing him out of bed. The poor thing was finally got off, with several delusive assurances that his absence should be short: that Mr. Edgar and Cathy would visit him, and other promises, equally ill-founded, which I invented and reiterated at intervals throughout the way. The pure heather-scented air, the bright sunshine, and the gentle canter of Minny, relieved his despondency after a while. He began to put questions concerning his new home, and its inhabitants, with greater interest and liveliness.
“Is Wuthering Heights as pleasant a place as Thrushcross Grange?” he inquired, turning to take a last glance into the valley, whence a light mist mounted and formed a fleecy cloud on the skirts of the blue.
“It is not so buried in trees,” I replied, “and it is not quite so large, but you can see the country beautifully all round; and the air is healthier for you—fresher and drier. You will, perhaps, think the building old and dark at first; though it is a respectable house: the next best in the neighbourhood. And you will have such nice rambles on the moors. Hareton Earnshaw—that is, Miss Cathy’s other cousin, and so yours in a manner—will show you all the sweetest spots; and you can bring a book in fine weather, and make a green hollow your study; and, now and then, your uncle may join you in a walk: he does, frequently, walk out on the hills.”
“And what is my father like?” he asked. “Is he as young and handsome as uncle?”
“He’s as young,” said I; “but he has black hair and eyes, and looks sterner; and he is taller and bigger altogether. He’ll not seem to you so gentle and kind at first, perhaps, because it is not his way: still, mind you, be frank and cordial with him; and naturally he’ll be fonder of you than any uncle, for you are his own.”
“Black hair and eyes!” mused Linton. “I can’t fancy him. Then I am not like him, am I?”
“Not much,” I answered: not a morsel, I thought, surveying with regret the white complexion and slim frame of my companion, and his large languid eyes—his mother’s eyes, save that, unless a morbid touchiness kindled them a moment, they had not a vestige of her sparkling spirit.
“How strange that he should never come to see mamma and me!” he murmured. “Has he ever seen me? If he has, I must have been a baby. I remember not a single thing about him!”
“Why, Master Linton,” said I, “three hundred miles is a great distance; and ten years seem very different in length to a grown-up person compared with what they do to you. It is probable Mr. Heathcliff proposed going from summer to summer, but never found a convenient opportunity; and now it is too late. Don’t trouble him with questions on the subject: it will disturb him, for no good.”
The boy was fully occupied with his own cogitations for the remainder of the ride, till we halted before the farmhouse garden-gate. I watched to catch his impressions in his countenance. He surveyed the carved front and low-browed lattices, the straggling gooseberry-bushes and crooked firs, with solemn intentness, and then shook his head: his private feelings entirely disapproved of the exterior of his new abode. But he had sense to postpone complaining: there might be compensation within. Before he dismounted, I went and opened the door. It was half-past six; the family had just finished breakfast: the servant was clearing and wiping down the table. Joseph stood by his master’s chair telling some tale concerning a lame horse; and Hareton was preparing for the hayfield.
“Hallo, Nelly!” said Mr. Heathcliff, when he saw me. “I feared I should have to come down and fetch my property myself. You’ve brought it, have you? Let us see what we can make of it.”
He got up and strode to the door: Hareton and Joseph followed in gaping curiosity. Poor Linton ran a frightened eye over the faces of the three.
“Sure-ly,” said Joseph after a grave inspection, “he’s swopped wi’ ye, Maister, an’ yon’s his lass!”
Heathcliff, having stared his son into an ague of confusion, uttered a scornful laugh.
“God! what a beauty! what a lovely, charming thing!” he exclaimed. “Hav’n’t they reared it on snails and sour milk, Nelly? Oh, damn my soul! but that’s worse than I expected—and the devil knows I was not sanguine!”
I bid the trembling and bewildered child get down, and enter. He did not thoroughly comprehend the meaning of his father’s speech, or whether it were intended for him: indeed, he was not yet certain that the grim, sneering stranger was his father. But he clung to me with growing trepidation; and on Mr. Heathcliff’s taking a seat and bidding him “come hither” he hid his face on my shoulder and wept.
“Tut, tut!” said Heathcliff, stretching out a hand and dragging him roughly between his knees, and then holding up his head by the chin. “None of that nonsense! We’re not going to hurt thee, Linton—isn’t that thy name? Thou art thy mother’s child, entirely! Where is my share in thee, puling chicken?”
He took off the boy’s cap and pushed back his thick flaxen curls, felt his slender arms and his small fingers; during which examination Linton ceased crying, and lifted his great blue eyes to inspect the inspector.
“Do you know me?” asked Heathcliff, having satisfied himself that the limbs were all equally frail and feeble.
“No,” said Linton, with a gaze of vacant fear.
“You’ve heard of me, I daresay?”
“No,” he replied again.
“No! What a shame of your mother, never to waken your filial regard for me! You are my son, then, I’ll tell you; and your mother was a wicked slut to leave you in ignorance of the sort of father you possessed. Now, don’t wince, and colour up! Though it is something to see you have not white blood. Be a good lad; and I’ll do for you. Nelly, if you be tired you may sit down; if not, get home again. I guess you’ll report what you hear and see to the cipher at the Grange; and this thing won’t be settled while you linger about it.”
“Well,” replied I, “I hope you’ll be kind to the boy, Mr. Heathcliff, or you’ll not keep him long; and he’s all you have akin in the wide world, that you will ever know—remember.”
“I’ll be very kind to him, you needn’t fear,” he said, laughing. “Only nobody else must be kind to him: I’m jealous of monopolising his affection. And, to begin my kindness, Joseph, bring the lad some breakfast. Hareton, you infernal calf, begone to your work. Yes, Nell,” he added, when they had departed, “my son is prospective owner of your place, and I should not wish him to die till I was certain of being his successor. Besides, he’s mine, and I want the triumph of seeing my descendant fairly lord of their estates; my child hiring their children to till their fathers’ lands for wages. That is the sole consideration which can make me endure the whelp: I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives! But that consideration is sufficient: he’s as safe with me, and shall be tended as carefully as your master tends his own. I have a room upstairs, furnished for him in handsome style; I’ve engaged a tutor, also, to come three times a week, from twenty miles’ distance, to teach him what he pleases to learn. I’ve ordered Hareton to obey him: and in fact I’ve arranged everything with a view to preserve the superior and the gentleman in him, above his associates. I do regret, however, that he so little deserves the trouble: if I wished any blessing in the world, it was to find him a worthy object of pride; and I’m bitterly disappointed with the whey-faced, whining wretch!”
While he was speaking, Joseph returned bearing a basin of milk-porridge, and placed it before Linton: who stirred round the homely mess with a look of aversion, and affirmed he could not eat it. I saw the old man-servant shared largely in his master’s scorn of the child; though he was compelled to retain the sentiment in his heart, because Heathcliff plainly meant his underlings to hold him in honour.
“Cannot ate it?” repeated he, peering in Linton’s face, and subduing his voice to a whisper, for fear of being overheard. “But Maister Hareton nivir ate naught else, when he wer a little ’un; and what wer gooid eneugh for him’s gooid eneugh for ye, I’s rayther think!”
“I sha’n’t eat it!” answered Linton, snappishly. “Take it away.”
Joseph snatched up the food indignantly, and brought it to us.
“Is there aught ails th’ victuals?” he asked, thrusting the tray under Heathcliff’s nose.
“What should ail them?” he said.
“Wah!” answered Joseph, “yon dainty chap says he cannut ate ’em. But I guess it’s raight! His mother wer just soa—we wer a’most too mucky to sow t’ corn for makking her breead.”
“Don’t mention his mother to me,” said the master, angrily. “Get him something that he can eat, that’s all. What is his usual food, Nelly?”
I suggested boiled milk or tea; and the housekeeper received instructions to prepare some. Come, I reflected, his father’s selfishness may contribute to his comfort. He perceives his delicate constitution, and the necessity of treating him tolerably. I’ll console Mr. Edgar by acquainting him with the turn Heathcliff’s humour has taken. Having no excuse for lingering longer, I slipped out, while Linton was engaged in timidly rebuffing the advances of a friendly sheep-dog. But he was too much on the alert to be cheated: as I closed the door, I heard a cry, and a frantic repetition of the words—
“Don’t leave me! I’ll not stay here! I’ll not stay here!”
Then the latch was raised and fell: they did not suffer him to come forth. I mounted Minny, and urged her to a trot; and so my brief guardianship ended.
CHAPTER XXI
We had sad work with little Cathy that day: she rose in high glee, eager to join her cousin, and such passionate tears and lamentations followed the news of his departure that Edgar himself was obliged to soothe her, by affirming he should come back soon: he added, however, “if I can get him”; and there were no hopes of that. This promise poorly pacified her; but time was more potent; and though still at intervals she inquired of her father when Linton would return, before she did see him again his features had waxed so dim in her memory that she did not recognise him.
When I chanced to encounter the housekeeper of Wuthering Heights, in paying business visits to Gimmerton, I used to ask how the young master got on; for he lived almost as secluded as Catherine herself, and was never to be seen. I could gather from her that he continued in weak health, and was a tiresome inmate. She said Mr. Heathcliff seemed to dislike him ever longer and worse, though he took some trouble to conceal it: he had an antipathy to the sound of his voice, and could not do at all with his sitting in the same room with him many minutes together. There seldom passed much talk between them: Linton learnt his lessons and spent his evenings in a small apartment they called the parlour: or else lay in bed all day: for he was constantly getting coughs, and colds, and aches, and pains of some sort.
“And I never knew such a faint-hearted creature,” added the woman; “nor one so careful of hisseln. He will go on, if I leave the window open a bit late in the evening. Oh! it’s killing, a breath of night air! And he must have a fire in the middle of summer; and Joseph’s bacca-pipe is poison; and he must always have sweets and dainties, and always milk, milk for ever—heeding naught how the rest of us are pinched in winter; and there he’ll sit, wrapped in his furred cloak in his chair by the fire, with some toast and water or other slop on the hob to sip at; and if Hareton, for pity, comes to amuse him—Hareton is not bad-natured, though he’s rough—they’re sure to part, one swearing and the other crying. I believe the master would relish Earnshaw’s thrashing him to a mummy, if he were not his son; and I’m certain he would be fit to turn him out of doors, if he knew half the nursing he gives hisseln. But then he won’t go into danger of temptation: he never enters the parlour, and should Linton show those ways in the house where he is, he sends him upstairs directly.”
I divined, from this account, that utter lack of sympathy had rendered young Heathcliff selfish and disagreeable, if he were not so originally; and my interest in him, consequently, decayed: though still I was moved with a sense of grief at his lot, and a wish that he had been left with us. Mr. Edgar encouraged me to gain information: he thought a great deal about him, I fancy, and would have run some risk to see him; and he told me once to ask the housekeeper whether he ever came into the village? She said he had only been twice, on horseback, accompanying his father; and both times he pretended to be quite knocked up for three or four days afterwards. That housekeeper left, if I recollect rightly, two years after he came; and another, whom I did not know, was her successor; she lives there still.
Time wore on at the Grange in its former pleasant way till Miss Cathy reached sixteen. On the anniversary of her birth we never manifested any signs of rejoicing, because it was also the anniversary of my late mistress’s death. Her father invariably spent that day alone in the library; and walked, at dusk, as far as Gimmerton kirkyard, where he would frequently prolong his stay beyond midnight. Therefore Catherine was thrown on her own resources for amusement. This twentieth of March was a beautiful spring day, and when her father had retired, my young lady came down dressed for going out, and said she asked to have a ramble on the edge of the moor with me: Mr. Linton had given her leave, if we went only a short distance and were back within the hour.
“So make haste, Ellen!” she cried. “I know where I wish to go; where a colony of moor-game are settled: I want to see whether they have made their nests yet.”
“That must be a good distance up,” I answered; “they don’t breed on the edge of the moor.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “I’ve gone very near with papa.”
I put on my bonnet and sallied out, thinking nothing more of the matter. She bounded before me, and returned to my side, and was off again like a young greyhound; and, at first, I found plenty of entertainment in listening to the larks singing far and near, and enjoying the sweet, warm sunshine; and watching her, my pet and my delight, with her golden ringlets flying loose behind, and her bright cheek, as soft and pure in its bloom as a wild rose, and her eyes radiant with cloudless pleasure. She was a happy creature, and an angel, in those days. It’s a pity she could not be content.
“Well,” said I, “where are your moor-game, Miss Cathy? We should be at them: the Grange park-fence is a great way off now.”
“Oh, a little further—only a little further, Ellen,” was her answer, continually. “Climb to that hillock, pass that bank, and by the time you reach the other side I shall have raised the birds.”
But there were so many hillocks and banks to climb and pass, that, at length, I began to be weary, and told her we must halt, and retrace our steps. I shouted to her, as she had outstripped me a long way; she either did not hear or did not regard, for she still sprang on, and I was compelled to follow. Finally, she dived into a hollow; and before I came in sight of her again, she was two miles nearer Wuthering Heights than her own home; and I beheld a couple of persons arrest her, one of whom I felt convinced was Mr. Heathcliff himself.
Cathy had been caught in the fact of plundering, or, at least, hunting out the nests of the grouse. The Heights were Heathcliff’s land, and he was reproving the poacher.
“I’ve neither taken any nor found any,” she said, as I toiled to them, expanding her hands in corroboration of the statement. “I didn’t mean to take them; but papa told me there were quantities up here, and I wished to see the eggs.”
Heathcliff glanced at me with an ill-meaning smile, expressing his acquaintance with the party, and, consequently, his malevolence towards it, and demanded who “papa” was?
“Mr. Linton of Thrushcross Grange,” she replied. “I thought you did not know me, or you wouldn’t have spoken in that way.”
“You suppose papa is highly esteemed and respected, then?” he said, sarcastically.
“And what are you?” inquired Catherine, gazing curiously on the speaker. “That man I’ve seen before. Is he your son?”
She pointed to Hareton, the other individual, who had gained nothing but increased bulk and strength by the addition of two years to his age: he seemed as awkward and rough as ever.
“Miss Cathy,” I interrupted, “it will be three hours instead of one that we are out, presently. We really must go back.”
“No, that man is not my son,” answered Heathcliff, pushing me aside. “But I have one, and you have seen him before too; and, though your nurse is in a hurry, I think both you and she would be the better for a little rest. Will you just turn this nab of heath, and walk into my house? You’ll get home earlier for the ease; and you shall receive a kind welcome.”
I whispered Catherine that she mustn’t, on any account, accede to the proposal: it was entirely out of the question.
“Why?” she asked, aloud. “I’m tired of running, and the ground is dewy: I can’t sit here. Let us go, Ellen. Besides, he says I have seen his son. He’s mistaken, I think; but I guess where he lives: at the farmhouse I visited in coming from Penistone Crags. Don’t you?”
“I do. Come, Nelly, hold your tongue—it will be a treat for her to look in on us. Hareton, get forwards with the lass. You shall walk with me, Nelly.”
“No, she’s not going to any such place,” I cried, struggling to release my arm, which he had seized: but she was almost at the door-stones already, scampering round the brow at full speed. Her appointed companion did not pretend to escort her: he shied off by the road-side, and vanished.
“Mr. Heathcliff, it’s very wrong,” I continued: “you know you mean no good. And there she’ll see Linton, and all will be told as soon as ever we return; and I shall have the blame.”
“I want her to see Linton,” he answered; “he’s looking better these few days; it’s not often he’s fit to be seen. And we’ll soon persuade her to keep the visit secret: where is the harm of it?”
“The harm of it is, that her father would hate me if he found I suffered her to enter your house; and I am convinced you have a bad design in encouraging her to do so,” I replied.
“My design is as honest as possible. I’ll inform you of its whole scope,” he said. “That the two cousins may fall in love, and get married. I’m acting generously to your master: his young chit has no expectations, and should she second my wishes she’ll be provided for at once as joint successor with Linton.”
“If Linton died,” I answered, “and his life is quite uncertain, Catherine would be the heir.”
“No, she would not,” he said. “There is no clause in the will to secure it so: his property would go to me; but, to prevent disputes, I desire their union, and am resolved to bring it about.”
“And I’m resolved she shall never approach your house with me again,” I returned, as we reached the gate, where Miss Cathy waited our coming.
Heathcliff bade me be quiet; and, preceding us up the path, hastened to open the door. My young lady gave him several looks, as if she could not exactly make up her mind what to think of him; but now he smiled when he met her eye, and softened his voice in addressing her; and I was foolish enough to imagine the memory of her mother might disarm him from desiring her injury. Linton stood on the hearth. He had been out walking in the fields, for his cap was on, and he was calling to Joseph to bring him dry shoes. He had grown tall of his age, still wanting some months of sixteen. His features were pretty yet, and his eye and complexion brighter than I remembered them, though with merely temporary lustre borrowed from the salubrious air and genial sun.
“Now, who is that?” asked Mr. Heathcliff, turning to Cathy. “Can you tell?”
“Your son?” she said, having doubtfully surveyed, first one and then the other.
“Yes, yes,” answered he: “but is this the only time you have beheld him? Think! Ah! you have a short memory. Linton, don’t you recall your cousin, that you used to tease us so with wishing to see?”
“What, Linton!” cried Cathy, kindling into joyful surprise at the name. “Is that little Linton? He’s taller than I am! Are you Linton?”
The youth stepped forward, and acknowledged himself: she kissed him fervently, and they gazed with wonder at the change time had wrought in the appearance of each. Catherine had reached her full height; her figure was both plump and slender, elastic as steel, and her whole aspect sparkling with health and spirits. Linton’s looks and movements were very languid, and his form extremely slight; but there was a grace in his manner that mitigated these defects, and rendered him not unpleasing. After exchanging numerous marks of fondness with him, his cousin went to Mr. Heathcliff, who lingered by the door, dividing his attention between the objects inside and those that lay without: pretending, that is, to observe the latter, and really noting the former alone.
“And you are my uncle, then!” she cried, reaching up to salute him. “I thought I liked you, though you were cross at first. Why don’t you visit at the Grange with Linton? To live all these years such close neighbours, and never see us, is odd: what have you done so for?”
“I visited it once or twice too often before you were born,” he answered. “There—damn it! If you have any kisses to spare, give them to Linton: they are thrown away on me.”
“Naughty Ellen!” exclaimed Catherine, flying to attack me next with her lavish caresses. “Wicked Ellen! to try to hinder me from entering. But I’ll take this walk every morning in future: may I, uncle? and sometimes bring papa. Won’t you be glad to see us?”
“Of course,” replied the uncle, with a hardly suppressed grimace, resulting from his deep aversion to both the proposed visitors. “But stay,” he continued, turning towards the young lady. “Now I think of it, I’d better tell you. Mr. Linton has a prejudice against me: we quarrelled at one time of our lives, with unchristian ferocity; and, if you mention coming here to him, he’ll put a veto on your visits altogether. Therefore, you must not mention it, unless you be careless of seeing your cousin hereafter: you may come, if you will, but you must not mention it.”
“Why did you quarrel?” asked Catherine, considerably crestfallen.
“He thought me too poor to wed his sister,” answered Heathcliff, “and was grieved that I got her: his pride was hurt, and he’ll never forgive it.”
“That’s wrong!” said the young lady: “some time I’ll tell him so. But Linton and I have no share in your quarrel. I’ll not come here, then; he shall come to the Grange.”
“It will be too far for me,” murmured her cousin: “to walk four miles would kill me. No, come here, Miss Catherine, now and then: not every morning, but once or twice a week.”
The father launched towards his son a glance of bitter contempt.
“I am afraid, Nelly, I shall lose my labour,” he muttered to me. “Miss Catherine, as the ninny calls her, will discover his value, and send him to the devil. Now, if it had been Hareton!—Do you know that, twenty times a day, I covet Hareton, with all his degradation? I’d have loved the lad had he been some one else. But I think he’s safe from her love. I’ll pit him against that paltry creature, unless it bestir itself briskly. We calculate it will scarcely last till it is eighteen. Oh, confound the vapid thing! He’s absorbed in drying his feet, and never looks at her.—Linton!”
“Yes, father,” answered the boy.
“Have you nothing to show your cousin anywhere about, not even a rabbit or a weasel’s nest? Take her into the garden, before you change your shoes; and into the stable to see your horse.”
“Wouldn’t you rather sit here?” asked Linton, addressing Cathy in a tone which expressed reluctance to move again.
“I don’t know,” she replied, casting a longing look to the door, and evidently eager to be active.
He kept his seat, and shrank closer to the fire. Heathcliff rose, and went into the kitchen, and from thence to the yard, calling out for Hareton. Hareton responded, and presently the two re-entered. The young man had been washing himself, as was visible by the glow on his cheeks and his wetted hair.
“Oh, I’ll ask you, uncle,” cried Miss Cathy, recollecting the housekeeper’s assertion. “That is not my cousin, is he?”
“Yes,” he replied, “your mother’s nephew. Don’t you like him?”
Catherine looked queer.
“Is he not a handsome lad?” he continued.
The uncivil little thing stood on tiptoe, and whispered a sentence in Heathcliff’s ear. He laughed; Hareton darkened: I perceived he was very sensitive to suspected slights, and had obviously a dim notion of his inferiority. But his master or guardian chased the frown by exclaiming—
“You’ll be the favourite among us, Hareton! She says you are a—What was it? Well, something very flattering. Here! you go with her round the farm. And behave like a gentleman, mind! Don’t use any bad words; and don’t stare when the young lady is not looking at you, and be ready to hide your face when she is; and, when you speak, say your words slowly, and keep your hands out of your pockets. Be off, and entertain her as nicely as you can.”
He watched the couple walking past the window. Earnshaw had his countenance completely averted from his companion. He seemed studying the familiar landscape with a stranger’s and an artist’s interest. Catherine took a sly look at him, expressing small admiration. She then turned her attention to seeking out objects of amusement for herself, and tripped merrily on, lilting a tune to supply the lack of conversation.
“I’ve tied his tongue,” observed Heathcliff. “He’ll not venture a single syllable all the time! Nelly, you recollect me at his age—nay, some years younger. Did I ever look so stupid: so ‘gaumless,’ as Joseph calls it?”
“Worse,” I replied, “because more sullen with it.”
“I’ve a pleasure in him,” he continued, reflecting aloud. “He has satisfied my expectations. If he were a born fool I should not enjoy it half so much. But he’s no fool; and I can sympathise with all his feelings, having felt them myself. I know what he suffers now, for instance, exactly: it is merely a beginning of what he shall suffer, though. And he’ll never be able to emerge from his bathos of coarseness and ignorance. I’ve got him faster than his scoundrel of a father secured me, and lower; for he takes a pride in his brutishness. I’ve taught him to scorn everything extra-animal as silly and weak. Don’t you think Hindley would be proud of his son, if he could see him? almost as proud as I am of mine. But there’s this difference; one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver. Mine has nothing valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit of making it go as far as such poor stuff can go. His had first-rate qualities, and they are lost: rendered worse than unavailing. I have nothing to regret; he would have more than any, but I, are aware of. And the best of it is, Hareton is damnably fond of me! You’ll own that I’ve outmatched Hindley there. If the dead villain could rise from his grave to abuse me for his offspring’s wrongs, I should have the fun of seeing the said offspring fight him back again, indignant that he should dare to rail at the one friend he has in the world!”
Heathcliff chuckled a fiendish laugh at the idea. I made no reply, because I saw that he expected none. Meantime, our young companion, who sat too removed from us to hear what was said, began to evince symptoms of uneasiness, probably repenting that he had denied himself the treat of Catherine’s society for fear of a little fatigue. His father remarked the restless glances wandering to the window, and the hand irresolutely extended towards his cap.
“Get up, you idle boy!” he exclaimed, with assumed heartiness. “Away after them! they are just at the corner, by the stand of hives.”
Linton gathered his energies, and left the hearth. The lattice was open, and, as he stepped out, I heard Cathy inquiring of her unsociable attendant what was that inscription over the door? Hareton stared up, and scratched his head like a true clown.
“It’s some damnable writing,” he answered. “I cannot read it.”
“Can’t read it?” cried Catherine; “I can read it: it’s English. But I want to know why it is there.”
Linton giggled: the first appearance of mirth he had exhibited.
“He does not know his letters,” he said to his cousin. “Could you believe in the existence of such a colossal dunce?”
“Is he all as he should be?” asked Miss Cathy, seriously; “or is he simple: not right? I’ve questioned him twice now, and each time he looked so stupid I think he does not understand me. I can hardly understand him, I’m sure!”
Linton repeated his laugh, and glanced at Hareton tauntingly; who certainly did not seem quite clear of comprehension at that moment.
“There’s nothing the matter but laziness; is there, Earnshaw?” he said. “My cousin fancies you are an idiot. There you experience the consequence of scorning ‘book-larning,’ as you would say. Have you noticed, Catherine, his frightful Yorkshire pronunciation?”
“Why, where the devil is the use on’t?” growled Hareton, more ready in answering his daily companion. He was about to enlarge further, but the two youngsters broke into a noisy fit of merriment: my giddy miss being delighted to discover that she might turn his strange talk to matter of amusement.
“Where is the use of the devil in that sentence?” tittered Linton. “Papa told you not to say any bad words, and you can’t open your mouth without one. Do try to behave like a gentleman, now do!”
“If thou weren’t more a lass than a lad, I’d fell thee this minute, I would; pitiful lath of a crater!” retorted the angry boor, retreating, while his face burnt with mingled rage and mortification; for he was conscious of being insulted, and embarrassed how to resent it.
Mr. Heathcliff having overheard the conversation, as well as I, smiled when he saw him go; but immediately afterwards cast a look of singular aversion on the flippant pair, who remained chattering in the doorway: the boy finding animation enough while discussing Hareton’s faults and deficiencies, and relating anecdotes of his goings on; and the girl relishing his pert and spiteful sayings, without considering the ill-nature they evinced. I began to dislike, more than to compassionate Linton, and to excuse his father in some measure for holding him cheap.
We stayed till afternoon: I could not tear Miss Cathy away sooner; but happily my master had not quitted his apartment, and remained ignorant of our prolonged absence. As we walked home, I would fain have enlightened my charge on the characters of the people we had quitted: but she got it into her head that I was prejudiced against them.
“Aha!” she cried, “you take papa’s side, Ellen: you are partial I know; or else you wouldn’t have cheated me so many years into the notion that Linton lived a long way from here. I’m really extremely angry; only I’m so pleased I can’t show it! But you must hold your tongue about my uncle; he’s my uncle, remember; and I’ll scold papa for quarrelling with him.”
And so she ran on, till I relinquished the endeavour to convince her of her mistake. She did not mention the visit that night, because she did not see Mr. Linton. Next day it all came out, sadly to my chagrin; and still I was not altogether sorry: I thought the burden of directing and warning would be more efficiently borne by him than me. But he was too timid in giving satisfactory reasons for his wish that she should shun connection with the household of the Heights, and Catherine liked good reasons for every restraint that harassed her petted will.
“Papa!” she exclaimed, after the morning’s salutations, “guess whom I saw yesterday, in my walk on the moors. Ah, papa, you started! you’ve not done right, have you, now? I saw—but listen, and you shall hear how I found you out; and Ellen, who is in league with you, and yet pretended to pity me so, when I kept hoping, and was always disappointed about Linton’s coming back!”
She gave a faithful account of her excursion and its consequences; and my master, though he cast more than one reproachful look at me, said nothing till she had concluded. Then he drew her to him, and asked if she knew why he had concealed Linton’s near neighbourhood from her? Could she think it was to deny her a pleasure that she might harmlessly enjoy?
“It was because you disliked Mr. Heathcliff,” she answered.
“Then you believe I care more for my own feelings than yours, Cathy?” he said. “No, it was not because I disliked Mr. Heathcliff, but because Mr. Heathcliff dislikes me; and is a most diabolical man, delighting to wrong and ruin those he hates, if they give him the slightest opportunity. I knew that you could not keep up an acquaintance with your cousin without being brought into contact with him; and I knew he would detest you on my account; so for your own good, and nothing else, I took precautions that you should not see Linton again. I meant to explain this some time as you grew older, and I’m sorry I delayed it.”
“But Mr. Heathcliff was quite cordial, papa,” observed Catherine, not at all convinced; “and he didn’t object to our seeing each other: he said I might come to his house when I pleased; only I must not tell you, because you had quarrelled with him, and would not forgive him for marrying aunt Isabella. And you won’t. You are the one to be blamed: he is willing to let us be friends, at least; Linton and I; and you are not.”
My master, perceiving that she would not take his word for her uncle-in-law’s evil disposition, gave a hasty sketch of his conduct to Isabella, and the manner in which Wuthering Heights became his property. He could not bear to discourse long upon the topic; for though he spoke little of it, he still felt the same horror and detestation of his ancient enemy that had occupied his heart ever since Mrs. Linton’s death. “She might have been living yet, if it had not been for him!” was his constant bitter reflection; and, in his eyes, Heathcliff seemed a murderer. Miss Cathy—conversant with no bad deeds except her own slight acts of disobedience, injustice, and passion, arising from hot temper and thoughtlessness, and repented of on the day they were committed—was amazed at the blackness of spirit that could brood on and cover revenge for years, and deliberately prosecute its plans without a visitation of remorse. She appeared so deeply impressed and shocked at this new view of human nature—excluded from all her studies and all her ideas till now—that Mr. Edgar deemed it unnecessary to pursue the subject. He merely added: “You will know hereafter, darling, why I wish you to avoid his house and family; now return to your old employments and amusements, and think no more about them.”
Catherine kissed her father, and sat down quietly to her lessons for a couple of hours, according to custom; then she accompanied him into the grounds, and the whole day passed as usual: but in the evening, when she had retired to her room, and I went to help her to undress, I found her crying, on her knees by the bedside.
“Oh, fie, silly child!” I exclaimed. “If you had any real griefs you’d be ashamed to waste a tear on this little contrariety. You never had one shadow of substantial sorrow, Miss Catherine. Suppose, for a minute, that master and I were dead, and you were by yourself in the world: how would you feel, then? Compare the present occasion with such an affliction as that, and be thankful for the friends you have, instead of coveting more.”
“I’m not crying for myself, Ellen,” she answered, “it’s for him. He expected to see me again to-morrow, and there he’ll be so disappointed: and he’ll wait for me, and I sha’n’t come!”
“Nonsense!” said I, “do you imagine he has thought as much of you as you have of him? Hasn’t he Hareton for a companion? Not one in a hundred would weep at losing a relation they had just seen twice, for two afternoons. Linton will conjecture how it is, and trouble himself no further about you.”
“But may I not write a note to tell him why I cannot come?” she asked, rising to her feet. “And just send those books I promised to lend him? His books are not as nice as mine, and he wanted to have them extremely, when I told him how interesting they were. May I not, Ellen?”
“No, indeed! no, indeed!” replied I with decision. “Then he would write to you, and there’d never be an end of it. No, Miss Catherine, the acquaintance must be dropped entirely: so papa expects, and I shall see that it is done.”
“But how can one little note—?” she recommenced, putting on an imploring countenance.
“Silence!” I interrupted. “We’ll not begin with your little notes. Get into bed.”
She threw at me a very naughty look, so naughty that I would not kiss her good-night at first: I covered her up, and shut her door, in great displeasure; but, repenting half-way, I returned softly, and lo! there was Miss standing at the table with a bit of blank paper before her and a pencil in her hand, which she guiltily slipped out of sight on my entrance.
“You’ll get nobody to take that, Catherine,” I said, “if you write it; and at present I shall put out your candle.”
I set the extinguisher on the flame, receiving as I did so a slap on my hand and a petulant “cross thing!” I then quitted her again, and she drew the bolt in one of her worst, most peevish humours. The letter was finished and forwarded to its destination by a milk-fetcher who came from the village; but that I didn’t learn till some time afterwards. Weeks passed on, and Cathy recovered her temper; though she grew wondrous fond of stealing off to corners by herself; and often, if I came near her suddenly while reading, she would start and bend over the book, evidently desirous to hide it; and I detected edges of loose paper sticking out beyond the leaves. She also got a trick of coming down early in the morning and lingering about the kitchen, as if she were expecting the arrival of something; and she had a small drawer in a cabinet in the library, which she would trifle over for hours, and whose key she took special care to remove when she left it.
One day, as she inspected this drawer, I observed that the playthings and trinkets which recently formed its contents were transmuted into bits of folded paper. My curiosity and suspicions were roused; I determined to take a peep at her mysterious treasures; so, at night, as soon as she and my master were safe upstairs, I searched, and readily found among my house keys one that would fit the lock. Having opened, I emptied the whole contents into my apron, and took them with me to examine at leisure in my own chamber. Though I could not but suspect, I was still surprised to discover that they were a mass of correspondence—daily almost, it must have been—from Linton Heathcliff: answers to documents forwarded by her. The earlier dated were embarrassed and short; gradually, however, they expanded into copious love-letters, foolish, as the age of the writer rendered natural, yet with touches here and there which I thought were borrowed from a more experienced source. Some of them struck me as singularly odd compounds of ardour and flatness; commencing in strong feeling, and concluding in the affected, wordy style that a schoolboy might use to a fancied, incorporeal sweetheart. Whether they satisfied Cathy I don’t know; but they appeared very worthless trash to me. After turning over as many as I thought proper, I tied them in a handkerchief and set them aside, relocking the vacant drawer.
Following her habit, my young lady descended early, and visited the kitchen: I watched her go to the door, on the arrival of a certain little boy; and, while the dairymaid filled his can, she tucked something into his jacket pocket, and plucked something out. I went round by the garden, and laid wait for the messenger; who fought valorously to defend his trust, and we spilt the milk between us; but I succeeded in abstracting the epistle; and, threatening serious consequences if he did not look sharp home, I remained under the wall and perused Miss Cathy’s affectionate composition. It was more simple and more eloquent than her cousin’s: very pretty and very silly. I shook my head, and went meditating into the house. The day being wet, she could not divert herself with rambling about the park; so, at the conclusion of her morning studies, she resorted to the solace of the drawer. Her father sat reading at the table; and I, on purpose, had sought a bit of work in some unripped fringes of the window-curtain, keeping my eye steadily fixed on her proceedings. Never did any bird flying back to a plundered nest, which it had left brimful of chirping young ones, express more complete despair, in its anguished cries and flutterings, than she by her single “Oh!” and the change that transfigured her late happy countenance. Mr. Linton looked up.
“What is the matter, love? Have you hurt yourself?” he said.
His tone and look assured her he had not been the discoverer of the hoard.
“No, papa!” she gasped. “Ellen! Ellen! come upstairs—I’m sick!”
I obeyed her summons, and accompanied her out.
“Oh, Ellen! you have got them,” she commenced immediately, dropping on her knees, when we were enclosed alone. “Oh, give them to me, and I’ll never, never do so again! Don’t tell papa. You have not told papa, Ellen? say you have not? I’ve been exceedingly naughty, but I won’t do it any more!”
With a grave severity in my manner I bade her stand up.
“So,” I exclaimed, “Miss Catherine, you are tolerably far on, it seems: you may well be ashamed of them! A fine bundle of trash you study in your leisure hours, to be sure: why, it’s good enough to be printed! And what do you suppose the master will think when I display it before him? I hav’n’t shown it yet, but you needn’t imagine I shall keep your ridiculous secrets. For shame! and you must have led the way in writing such absurdities: he would not have thought of beginning, I’m certain.”
“I didn’t! I didn’t!” sobbed Cathy, fit to break her heart. “I didn’t once think of loving him till—”
“Loving!” cried I, as scornfully as I could utter the word. “Loving! Did anybody ever hear the like! I might just as well talk of loving the miller who comes once a year to buy our corn. Pretty loving, indeed! and both times together you have seen Linton hardly four hours in your life! Now here is the babyish trash. I’m going with it to the library; and we’ll see what your father says to such loving.”
She sprang at her precious epistles, but I held them above my head; and then she poured out further frantic entreaties that I would burn them—do anything rather than show them. And being really fully as much inclined to laugh as scold—for I esteemed it all girlish vanity—I at length relented in a measure, and asked,—“If I consent to burn them, will you promise faithfully neither to send nor receive a letter again, nor a book (for I perceive you have sent him books), nor locks of hair, nor rings, nor playthings?”
“We don’t send playthings,” cried Catherine, her pride overcoming her shame.
“Nor anything at all, then, my lady?” I said. “Unless you will, here I go.”
“I promise, Ellen!” she cried, catching my dress. “Oh, put them in the fire, do, do!”
But when I proceeded to open a place with the poker the sacrifice was too painful to be borne. She earnestly supplicated that I would spare her one or two.
“One or two, Ellen, to keep for Linton’s sake!”
I unknotted the handkerchief, and commenced dropping them in from an angle, and the flame curled up the chimney.
“I will have one, you cruel wretch!” she screamed, darting her hand into the fire, and drawing forth some half-consumed fragments, at the expense of her fingers.
“Very well—and I will have some to exhibit to papa!” I answered, shaking back the rest into the bundle, and turning anew to the door.
She emptied her blackened pieces into the flames, and motioned me to finish the immolation. It was done; I stirred up the ashes, and interred them under a shovelful of coals; and she mutely, and with a sense of intense injury, retired to her private apartment. I descended to tell my master that the young lady’s qualm of sickness was almost gone, but I judged it best for her to lie down a while. She wouldn’t dine; but she reappeared at tea, pale, and red about the eyes, and marvellously subdued in outward aspect. Next morning I answered the letter by a slip of paper, inscribed, “Master Heathcliff is requested to send no more notes to Miss Linton, as she will not receive them.” And, thenceforth, the little boy came with vacant pockets.
CHAPTER XXII
Summer drew to an end, and early autumn: it was past Michaelmas, but the harvest was late that year, and a few of our fields were still uncleared. Mr. Linton and his daughter would frequently walk out among the reapers; at the carrying of the last sheaves they stayed till dusk, and the evening happening to be chill and damp, my master caught a bad cold, that settled obstinately on his lungs, and confined him indoors throughout the whole of the winter, nearly without intermission.
Poor Cathy, frightened from her little romance, had been considerably sadder and duller since its abandonment; and her father insisted on her reading less, and taking more exercise. She had his companionship no longer; I esteemed it a duty to supply its lack, as much as possible, with mine: an inefficient substitute; for I could only spare two or three hours, from my numerous diurnal occupations, to follow her footsteps, and then my society was obviously less desirable than his.
On an afternoon in October, or the beginning of November—a fresh watery afternoon, when the turf and paths were rustling with moist, withered leaves, and the cold blue sky was half hidden by clouds—dark grey streamers, rapidly mounting from the west, and boding abundant rain—I requested my young lady to forego her ramble, because I was certain of showers. She refused; and I unwillingly donned a cloak, and took my umbrella to accompany her on a stroll to the bottom of the park: a formal walk which she generally affected if low-spirited—and that she invariably was when Mr. Edgar had been worse than ordinary, a thing never known from his confession, but guessed both by her and me from his increased silence and the melancholy of his countenance. She went sadly on: there was no running or bounding now, though the chill wind might well have tempted her to race. And often, from the side of my eye, I could detect her raising a hand, and brushing something off her cheek. I gazed round for a means of diverting her thoughts. On one side of the road rose a high, rough bank, where hazels and stunted oaks, with their roots half exposed, held uncertain tenure: the soil was too loose for the latter; and strong winds had blown some nearly horizontal. In summer Miss Catherine delighted to climb along these trunks, and sit in the branches, swinging twenty feet above the ground; and I, pleased with her agility and her light, childish heart, still considered it proper to scold every time I caught her at such an elevation, but so that she knew there was no necessity for descending. From dinner to tea she would lie in her breeze-rocked cradle, doing nothing except singing old songs—my nursery lore—to herself, or watching the birds, joint tenants, feed and entice their young ones to fly: or nestling with closed lids, half thinking, half dreaming, happier than words can express.
“Look, Miss!” I exclaimed, pointing to a nook under the roots of one twisted tree. “Winter is not here yet. There’s a little flower up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up, and pluck it to show to papa?”
Cathy stared a long time at the lonely blossom trembling in its earthy shelter, and replied, at length—“No, I’ll not touch it: but it looks melancholy, does it not, Ellen?”
“Yes,” I observed, “about as starved and sackless as you: your cheeks are bloodless; let us take hold of hands and run. You’re so low, I daresay I shall keep up with you.”
“No,” she repeated, and continued sauntering on, pausing at intervals to muse over a bit of moss, or a tuft of blanched grass, or a fungus spreading its bright orange among the heaps of brown foliage; and, ever and anon, her hand was lifted to her averted face.
“Catherine, why are you crying, love?” I asked, approaching and putting my arm over her shoulder. “You mustn’t cry because papa has a cold; be thankful it is nothing worse.”
She now put no further restraint on her tears; her breath was stifled by sobs.
“Oh, it will be something worse,” she said. “And what shall I do when papa and you leave me, and I am by myself? I can’t forget your words, Ellen; they are always in my ear. How life will be changed, how dreary the world will be, when papa and you are dead.”
“None can tell whether you won’t die before us,” I replied. “It’s wrong to anticipate evil. We’ll hope there are years and years to come before any of us go: master is young, and I am strong, and hardly forty-five. My mother lived till eighty, a canty dame to the last. And suppose Mr. Linton were spared till he saw sixty, that would be more years than you have counted, Miss. And would it not be foolish to mourn a calamity above twenty years beforehand?”
“But Aunt Isabella was younger than papa,” she remarked, gazing up with timid hope to seek further consolation.
“Aunt Isabella had not you and me to nurse her,” I replied. “She wasn’t as happy as Master: she hadn’t as much to live for. All you need do, is to wait well on your father, and cheer him by letting him see you cheerful; and avoid giving him anxiety on any subject: mind that, Cathy! I’ll not disguise but you might kill him if you were wild and reckless, and cherished a foolish, fanciful affection for the son of a person who would be glad to have him in his grave; and allowed him to discover that you fretted over the separation he has judged it expedient to make.”
“I fret about nothing on earth except papa’s illness,” answered my companion. “I care for nothing in comparison with papa. And I’ll never—never—oh, never, while I have my senses, do an act or say a word to vex him. I love him better than myself, Ellen; and I know it by this: I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be: that proves I love him better than myself.”
“Good words,” I replied. “But deeds must prove it also; and after he is well, remember you don’t forget resolutions formed in the hour of fear.”
As we talked, we neared a door that opened on the road; and my young lady, lightening into sunshine again, climbed up and seated herself on the top of the wall, reaching over to gather some hips that bloomed scarlet on the summit branches of the wild-rose trees shadowing the highway side: the lower fruit had disappeared, but only birds could touch the upper, except from Cathy’s present station. In stretching to pull them, her hat fell off; and as the door was locked, she proposed scrambling down to recover it. I bid her be cautious lest she got a fall, and she nimbly disappeared. But the return was no such easy matter: the stones were smooth and neatly cemented, and the rosebushes and blackberry stragglers could yield no assistance in re-ascending. I, like a fool, didn’t recollect that, till I heard her laughing and exclaiming—“Ellen! you’ll have to fetch the key, or else I must run round to the porter’s lodge. I can’t scale the ramparts on this side!”
“Stay where you are,” I answered; “I have my bundle of keys in my pocket: perhaps I may manage to open it; if not, I’ll go.”
Catherine amused herself with dancing to and fro before the door, while I tried all the large keys in succession. I had applied the last, and found that none would do; so, repeating my desire that she would remain there, I was about to hurry home as fast as I could, when an approaching sound arrested me. It was the trot of a horse; Cathy’s dance stopped also.
“Who is that?” I whispered.
“Ellen, I wish you could open the door,” whispered back my companion, anxiously.
“Ho, Miss Linton!” cried a deep voice (the rider’s), “I’m glad to meet you. Don’t be in haste to enter, for I have an explanation to ask and obtain.”
“I sha’n’t speak to you, Mr. Heathcliff,” answered Catherine. “Papa says you are a wicked man, and you hate both him and me; and Ellen says the same.”
“That is nothing to the purpose,” said Heathcliff. (He it was.) “I don’t hate my son, I suppose; and it is concerning him that I demand your attention. Yes; you have cause to blush. Two or three months since, were you not in the habit of writing to Linton? making love in play, eh? You deserved, both of you, flogging for that! You especially, the elder; and less sensitive, as it turns out. I’ve got your letters, and if you give me any pertness I’ll send them to your father. I presume you grew weary of the amusement and dropped it, didn’t you? Well, you dropped Linton with it into a Slough of Despond. He was in earnest: in love, really. As true as I live, he’s dying for you; breaking his heart at your fickleness: not figuratively, but actually. Though Hareton has made him a standing jest for six weeks, and I have used more serious measures, and attempted to frighten him out of his idiocy, he gets worse daily; and he’ll be under the sod before summer, unless you restore him!”
“How can you lie so glaringly to the poor child?” I called from the inside. “Pray ride on! How can you deliberately get up such paltry falsehoods? Miss Cathy, I’ll knock the lock off with a stone: you won’t believe that vile nonsense. You can feel in yourself it is impossible that a person should die for love of a stranger.”
“I was not aware there were eavesdroppers,” muttered the detected villain. “Worthy Mrs. Dean, I like you, but I don’t like your double-dealing,” he added aloud. “How could you lie so glaringly as to affirm I hated the ‘poor child’? and invent bugbear stories to terrify her from my door-stones? Catherine Linton (the very name warms me), my bonny lass, I shall be from home all this week; go and see if I have not spoken truth: do, there’s a darling! Just imagine your father in my place, and Linton in yours; then think how you would value your careless lover if he refused to stir a step to comfort you, when your father himself entreated him; and don’t, from pure stupidity, fall into the same error. I swear, on my salvation, he’s going to his grave, and none but you can save him!”
The lock gave way and I issued out.
“I swear Linton is dying,” repeated Heathcliff, looking hard at me. “And grief and disappointment are hastening his death. Nelly, if you won’t let her go, you can walk over yourself. But I shall not return till this time next week; and I think your master himself would scarcely object to her visiting her cousin.”
“Come in,” said I, taking Cathy by the arm and half forcing her to re-enter; for she lingered, viewing with troubled eyes the features of the speaker, too stern to express his inward deceit.
He pushed his horse close, and, bending down, observed—
“Miss Catherine, I’ll own to you that I have little patience with Linton; and Hareton and Joseph have less. I’ll own that he’s with a harsh set. He pines for kindness, as well as love; and a kind word from you would be his best medicine. Don’t mind Mrs. Dean’s cruel cautions; but be generous, and contrive to see him. He dreams of you day and night, and cannot be persuaded that you don’t hate him, since you neither write nor call.”
I closed the door, and rolled a stone to assist the loosened lock in holding it; and spreading my umbrella, I drew my charge underneath: for the rain began to drive through the moaning branches of the trees, and warned us to avoid delay. Our hurry prevented any comment on the encounter with Heathcliff, as we stretched towards home; but I divined instinctively that Catherine’s heart was clouded now in double darkness. Her features were so sad, they did not seem hers: she evidently regarded what she had heard as every syllable true.
The master had retired to rest before we came in. Cathy stole to his room to inquire how he was; he had fallen asleep. She returned, and asked me to sit with her in the library. We took our tea together; and afterwards she lay down on the rug, and told me not to talk, for she was weary. I got a book, and pretended to read. As soon as she supposed me absorbed in my occupation, she recommenced her silent weeping: it appeared, at present, her favourite diversion. I suffered her to enjoy it a while; then I expostulated: deriding and ridiculing all Mr. Heathcliff’s assertions about his son, as if I were certain she would coincide. Alas! I hadn’t skill to counteract the effect his account had produced: it was just what he intended.
“You may be right, Ellen,” she answered; “but I shall never feel at ease till I know. And I must tell Linton it is not my fault that I don’t write, and convince him that I shall not change.”
What use were anger and protestations against her silly credulity? We parted that night—hostile; but next day beheld me on the road to Wuthering Heights, by the side of my wilful young mistress’s pony. I couldn’t bear to witness her sorrow: to see her pale, dejected countenance, and heavy eyes: and I yielded, in the faint hope that Linton himself might prove, by his reception of us, how little of the tale was founded on fact.
CHAPTER XXIII
The rainy night had ushered in a misty morning—half frost, half drizzle—and temporary brooks crossed our path—gurgling from the uplands. My feet were thoroughly wetted; I was cross and low; exactly the humour suited for making the most of these disagreeable things. We entered the farm-house by the kitchen way, to ascertain whether Mr. Heathcliff were really absent: because I put slight faith in his own affirmation.
Joseph seemed sitting in a sort of elysium alone, beside a roaring fire; a quart of ale on the table near him, bristling with large pieces of toasted oat-cake; and his black, short pipe in his mouth. Catherine ran to the hearth to warm herself. I asked if the master was in? My question remained so long unanswered, that I thought the old man had grown deaf, and repeated it louder.
“Na—ay!” he snarled, or rather screamed through his nose. “Na—ay! yah muh goa back whear yah coom frough.”
“Joseph!” cried a peevish voice, simultaneously with me, from the inner room. “How often am I to call you? There are only a few red ashes now. Joseph! come this moment.”
Vigorous puffs, and a resolute stare into the grate, declared he had no ear for this appeal. The housekeeper and Hareton were invisible; one gone on an errand, and the other at his work, probably. We knew Linton’s tones, and entered.
“Oh, I hope you’ll die in a garret, starved to death!” said the boy, mistaking our approach for that of his negligent attendant.
He stopped on observing his error: his cousin flew to him.
“Is that you, Miss Linton?” he said, raising his head from the arm of the great chair, in which he reclined. “No—don’t kiss me: it takes my breath. Dear me! Papa said you would call,” continued he, after recovering a little from Catherine’s embrace; while she stood by looking very contrite. “Will you shut the door, if you please? you left it open; and those—those detestable creatures won’t bring coals to the fire. It’s so cold!”
I stirred up the cinders, and fetched a scuttleful myself. The invalid complained of being covered with ashes; but he had a tiresome cough, and looked feverish and ill, so I did not rebuke his temper.
“Well, Linton,” murmured Catherine, when his corrugated brow relaxed, “are you glad to see me? Can I do you any good?”
“Why didn’t you come before?” he asked. “You should have come, instead of writing. It tired me dreadfully writing those long letters. I’d far rather have talked to you. Now, I can neither bear to talk, nor anything else. I wonder where Zillah is! Will you” (looking at me) “step into the kitchen and see?”
I had received no thanks for my other service; and being unwilling to run to and fro at his behest, I replied—
“Nobody is out there but Joseph.”
“I want to drink,” he exclaimed fretfully, turning away. “Zillah is constantly gadding off to Gimmerton since papa went: it’s miserable! And I’m obliged to come down here—they resolved never to hear me upstairs.”
“Is your father attentive to you, Master Heathcliff?” I asked, perceiving Catherine to be checked in her friendly advances.
“Attentive? He makes them a little more attentive at least,” he cried. “The wretches! Do you know, Miss Linton, that brute Hareton laughs at me! I hate him! indeed, I hate them all: they are odious beings.”
Cathy began searching for some water; she lighted on a pitcher in the dresser, filled a tumbler, and brought it. He bid her add a spoonful of wine from a bottle on the table; and having swallowed a small portion, appeared more tranquil, and said she was very kind.
“And are you glad to see me?” asked she, reiterating her former question, and pleased to detect the faint dawn of a smile.
“Yes, I am. It’s something new to hear a voice like yours!” he replied. “But I have been vexed, because you wouldn’t come. And papa swore it was owing to me: he called me a pitiful, shuffling, worthless thing; and said you despised me; and if he had been in my place, he would be more the master of the Grange than your father by this time. But you don’t despise me, do you, Miss—?”
“I wish you would say Catherine, or Cathy,” interrupted my young lady. “Despise you? No! Next to papa and Ellen, I love you better than anybody living. I don’t love Mr. Heathcliff, though; and I dare not come when he returns: will he stay away many days?”
“Not many,” answered Linton; “but he goes on to the moors frequently, since the shooting season commenced; and you might spend an hour or two with me in his absence. Do say you will. I think I should not be peevish with you: you’d not provoke me, and you’d always be ready to help me, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Catherine, stroking his long soft hair, “if I could only get papa’s consent, I’d spend half my time with you. Pretty Linton! I wish you were my brother.”
“And then you would like me as well as your father?” observed he, more cheerfully. “But papa says you would love me better than him and all the world, if you were my wife; so I’d rather you were that.”
“No, I should never love anybody better than papa,” she returned gravely. “And people hate their wives, sometimes; but not their sisters and brothers: and if you were the latter, you would live with us, and papa would be as fond of you as he is of me.”
Linton denied that people ever hated their wives; but Cathy affirmed they did, and, in her wisdom, instanced his own father’s aversion to her aunt. I endeavoured to stop her thoughtless tongue. I couldn’t succeed till everything she knew was out. Master Heathcliff, much irritated, asserted her relation was false.
“Papa told me; and papa does not tell falsehoods,” she answered pertly.
“My papa scorns yours!” cried Linton. “He calls him a sneaking fool.”
“Yours is a wicked man,” retorted Catherine; “and you are very naughty to dare to repeat what he says. He must be wicked to have made Aunt Isabella leave him as she did.”
“She didn’t leave him,” said the boy; “you sha’n’t contradict me.”
“She did,” cried my young lady.
“Well, I’ll tell you something!” said Linton. “Your mother hated your father: now then.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Catherine, too enraged to continue.
“And she loved mine,” added he.
“You little liar! I hate you now!” she panted, and her face grew red with passion.
“She did! she did!” sang Linton, sinking into the recess of his chair, and leaning back his head to enjoy the agitation of the other disputant, who stood behind.
“Hush, Master Heathcliff!” I said; “that’s your father’s tale, too, I suppose.”
“It isn’t: you hold your tongue!” he answered. “She did, she did, Catherine! she did, she did!”
Cathy, beside herself, gave the chair a violent push, and caused him to fall against one arm. He was immediately seized by a suffocating cough that soon ended his triumph. It lasted so long that it frightened even me. As to his cousin, she wept with all her might, aghast at the mischief she had done: though she said nothing. I held him till the fit exhausted itself. Then he thrust me away, and leant his head down silently. Catherine quelled her lamentations also, took a seat opposite, and looked solemnly into the fire.
“How do you feel now, Master Heathcliff?” I inquired, after waiting ten minutes.
“I wish she felt as I do,” he replied: “spiteful, cruel thing! Hareton never touches me: he never struck me in his life. And I was better to-day: and there—” his voice died in a whimper.
“I didn’t strike you!” muttered Cathy, chewing her lip to prevent another burst of emotion.
He sighed and moaned like one under great suffering, and kept it up for a quarter of an hour; on purpose to distress his cousin apparently, for whenever he caught a stifled sob from her he put renewed pain and pathos into the inflexions of his voice.
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Linton,” she said at length, racked beyond endurance. “But I couldn’t have been hurt by that little push, and I had no idea that you could, either: you’re not much, are you, Linton? Don’t let me go home thinking I’ve done you harm. Answer! speak to me.”
“I can’t speak to you,” he murmured; “you’ve hurt me so that I shall lie awake all night choking with this cough. If you had it you’d know what it was; but you’ll be comfortably asleep while I’m in agony, and nobody near me. I wonder how you would like to pass those fearful nights!” And he began to wail aloud, for very pity of himself.
“Since you are in the habit of passing dreadful nights,” I said, “it won’t be Miss who spoils your ease: you’d be the same had she never come. However, she shall not disturb you again; and perhaps you’ll get quieter when we leave you.”
“Must I go?” asked Catherine dolefully, bending over him. “Do you want me to go, Linton?”
“You can’t alter what you’ve done,” he replied pettishly, shrinking from her, “unless you alter it for the worse by teasing me into a fever.”
“Well, then, I must go?” she repeated.
“Let me alone, at least,” said he; “I can’t bear your talking.”
She lingered, and resisted my persuasions to departure a tiresome while; but as he neither looked up nor spoke, she finally made a movement to the door, and I followed. We were recalled by a scream. Linton had slid from his seat on to the hearthstone, and lay writhing in the mere perverseness of an indulged plague of a child, determined to be as grievous and harassing as it can. I thoroughly gauged his disposition from his behaviour, and saw at once it would be folly to attempt humouring him. Not so my companion: she ran back in terror, knelt down, and cried, and soothed, and entreated, till he grew quiet from lack of breath: by no means from compunction at distressing her.
“I shall lift him on to the settle,” I said, “and he may roll about as he pleases: we can’t stop to watch him. I hope you are satisfied, Miss Cathy, that you are not the person to benefit him; and that his condition of health is not occasioned by attachment to you. Now, then, there he is! Come away: as soon as he knows there is nobody by to care for his nonsense, he’ll be glad to lie still.”
She placed a cushion under his head, and offered him some water; he rejected the latter, and tossed uneasily on the former, as if it were a stone or a block of wood. She tried to put it more comfortably.
“I can’t do with that,” he said; “it’s not high enough.”
Catherine brought another to lay above it.
“That’s too high,” murmured the provoking thing.
“How must I arrange it, then?” she asked despairingly.
He twined himself up to her, as she half knelt by the settle, and converted her shoulder into a support.
“No, that won’t do,” I said. “You’ll be content with the cushion, Master Heathcliff. Miss has wasted too much time on you already: we cannot remain five minutes longer.”
“Yes, yes, we can!” replied Cathy. “He’s good and patient now. He’s beginning to think I shall have far greater misery than he will to-night, if I believe he is the worse for my visit: and then I dare not come again. Tell the truth about it, Linton; for I mustn’t come, if I have hurt you.”
“You must come, to cure me,” he answered. “You ought to come, because you have hurt me: you know you have extremely! I was not as ill when you entered as I am at present—was I?”
“But you’ve made yourself ill by crying and being in a passion.—I didn’t do it all,” said his cousin. “However, we’ll be friends now. And you want me: you would wish to see me sometimes, really?”
“I told you I did,” he replied impatiently. “Sit on the settle and let me lean on your knee. That’s as mamma used to do, whole afternoons together. Sit quite still and don’t talk: but you may sing a song, if you can sing; or you may say a nice long interesting ballad—one of those you promised to teach me; or a story. I’d rather have a ballad, though: begin.”
Catherine repeated the longest she could remember. The employment pleased both mightily. Linton would have another, and after that another, notwithstanding my strenuous objections; and so they went on until the clock struck twelve, and we heard Hareton in the court, returning for his dinner.
“And to-morrow, Catherine, will you be here to-morrow?” asked young Heathcliff, holding her frock as she rose reluctantly.
“No,” I answered, “nor next day neither.” She, however, gave a different response evidently, for his forehead cleared as she stooped and whispered in his ear.
“You won’t go to-morrow, recollect, Miss!” I commenced, when we were out of the house. “You are not dreaming of it, are you?”
She smiled.
“Oh, I’ll take good care,” I continued: “I’ll have that lock mended, and you can escape by no way else.”
“I can get over the wall,” she said laughing. “The Grange is not a prison, Ellen, and you are not my gaoler. And besides, I’m almost seventeen: I’m a woman. And I’m certain Linton would recover quickly if he had me to look after him. I’m older than he is, you know, and wiser: less childish, am I not? And he’ll soon do as I direct him, with some slight coaxing. He’s a pretty little darling when he’s good. I’d make such a pet of him, if he were mine. We should never quarrel, should we, after we were used to each other? Don’t you like him, Ellen?”
“Like him!” I exclaimed. “The worst-tempered bit of a sickly slip that ever struggled into its teens. Happily, as Mr. Heathcliff conjectured, he’ll not win twenty. I doubt whether he’ll see spring, indeed. And small loss to his family whenever he drops off. And lucky it is for us that his father took him: the kinder he was treated, the more tedious and selfish he’d be. I’m glad you have no chance of having him for a husband, Miss Catherine.”
My companion waxed serious at hearing this speech. To speak of his death so regardlessly wounded her feelings.
“He’s younger than I,” she answered, after a protracted pause of meditation, “and he ought to live the longest: he will—he must live as long as I do. He’s as strong now as when he first came into the north; I’m positive of that. It’s only a cold that ails him, the same as papa has. You say papa will get better, and why shouldn’t he?”
“Well, well,” I cried, “after all, we needn’t trouble ourselves; for listen, Miss,—and mind, I’ll keep my word,—if you attempt going to Wuthering Heights again, with or without me, I shall inform Mr. Linton, and, unless he allow it, the intimacy with your cousin must not be revived.”
“It has been revived,” muttered Cathy, sulkily.
“Must not be continued, then,” I said.
“We’ll see,” was her reply, and she set off at a gallop, leaving me to toil in the rear.
We both reached home before our dinner-time; my master supposed we had been wandering through the park, and therefore he demanded no explanation of our absence. As soon as I entered I hastened to change my soaked shoes and stockings; but sitting such a while at the Heights had done the mischief. On the succeeding morning I was laid up, and during three weeks I remained incapacitated for attending to my duties: a calamity never experienced prior to that period, and never, I am thankful to say, since.
My little mistress behaved like an angel in coming to wait on me, and cheer my solitude; the confinement brought me exceedingly low. It is wearisome, to a stirring active body: but few have slighter reasons for complaint than I had. The moment Catherine left Mr. Linton’s room she appeared at my bedside. Her day was divided between us; no amusement usurped a minute: she neglected her meals, her studies, and her play; and she was the fondest nurse that ever watched. She must have had a warm heart, when she loved her father so, to give so much to me. I said her days were divided between us; but the master retired early, and I generally needed nothing after six o’clock, thus the evening was her own. Poor thing! I never considered what she did with herself after tea. And though frequently, when she looked in to bid me good-night, I remarked a fresh colour in her cheeks and a pinkness over her slender fingers, instead of fancying the hue borrowed from a cold ride across the moors, I laid it to the charge of a hot fire in the library.
CHAPTER XXIV
At the close of three weeks I was able to quit my chamber and move about the house. And on the first occasion of my sitting up in the evening I asked Catherine to read to me, because my eyes were weak. We were in the library, the master having gone to bed: she consented, rather unwillingly, I fancied; and imagining my sort of books did not suit her, I bid her please herself in the choice of what she perused. She selected one of her own favourites, and got forward steadily about an hour; then came frequent questions.
“Ellen, are not you tired? Hadn’t you better lie down now? You’ll be sick, keeping up so long, Ellen.”
“No, no, dear, I’m not tired,” I returned, continually.
Perceiving me immovable, she essayed another method of showing her disrelish for her occupation. It changed to yawning, and stretching, and—
“Ellen, I’m tired.”
“Give over then and talk,” I answered.
That was worse: she fretted and sighed, and looked at her watch till eight, and finally went to her room, completely overdone with sleep; judging by her peevish, heavy look, and the constant rubbing she inflicted on her eyes. The following night she seemed more impatient still; and on the third from recovering my company she complained of a headache, and left me. I thought her conduct odd; and having remained alone a long while, I resolved on going and inquiring whether she were better, and asking her to come and lie on the sofa, instead of upstairs in the dark. No Catherine could I discover upstairs, and none below. The servants affirmed they had not seen her. I listened at Mr. Edgar’s door; all was silence. I returned to her apartment, extinguished my candle, and seated myself in the window.
The moon shone bright; a sprinkling of snow covered the ground, and I reflected that she might, possibly, have taken it into her head to walk about the garden, for refreshment. I did detect a figure creeping along the inner fence of the park; but it was not my young mistress: on its emerging into the light, I recognised one of the grooms. He stood a considerable period, viewing the carriage-road through the grounds; then started off at a brisk pace, as if he had detected something, and reappeared presently, leading Miss’s pony; and there she was, just dismounted, and walking by its side. The man took his charge stealthily across the grass towards the stable. Cathy entered by the casement-window of the drawing-room, and glided noiselessly up to where I awaited her. She put the door gently to, slipped off her snowy shoes, untied her hat, and was proceeding, unconscious of my espionage, to lay aside her mantle, when I suddenly rose and revealed myself. The surprise petrified her an instant: she uttered an inarticulate exclamation, and stood fixed.
“My dear Miss Catherine,” I began, too vividly impressed by her recent kindness to break into a scold, “where have you been riding out at this hour? And why should you try to deceive me by telling a tale? Where have you been? Speak!”
“To the bottom of the park,” she stammered. “I didn’t tell a tale.”
“And nowhere else?” I demanded.
“No,” was the muttered reply.
“Oh, Catherine!” I cried, sorrowfully. “You know you have been doing wrong, or you wouldn’t be driven to uttering an untruth to me. That does grieve me. I’d rather be three months ill, than hear you frame a deliberate lie.”
She sprang forward, and bursting into tears, threw her arms round my neck.
“Well, Ellen, I’m so afraid of you being angry,” she said. “Promise not to be angry, and you shall know the very truth: I hate to hide it.”
We sat down in the window-seat; I assured her I would not scold, whatever her secret might be, and I guessed it, of course; so she commenced—
“I’ve been to Wuthering Heights, Ellen, and I’ve never missed going a day since you fell ill; except thrice before, and twice after you left your room. I gave Michael books and pictures to prepare Minny every evening, and to put her back in the stable: you mustn’t scold him either, mind. I was at the Heights by half-past six, and generally stayed till half-past eight, and then galloped home. It was not to amuse myself that I went: I was often wretched all the time. Now and then I was happy: once in a week perhaps. At first, I expected there would be sad work persuading you to let me keep my word to Linton: for I had engaged to call again next day, when we quitted him; but, as you stayed upstairs on the morrow, I escaped that trouble. While Michael was refastening the lock of the park door in the afternoon, I got possession of the key, and told him how my cousin wished me to visit him, because he was sick, and couldn’t come to the Grange; and how papa would object to my going: and then I negotiated with him about the pony. He is fond of reading, and he thinks of leaving soon to get married; so he offered, if I would lend him books out of the library, to do what I wished: but I preferred giving him my own, and that satisfied him better.
“On my second visit Linton seemed in lively spirits; and Zillah (that is their housekeeper) made us a clean room and a good fire, and told us that, as Joseph was out at a prayer-meeting and Hareton Earnshaw was off with his dogs—robbing our woods of pheasants, as I heard afterwards—we might do what we liked. She brought me some warm wine and gingerbread, and appeared exceedingly good-natured; and Linton sat in the arm-chair, and I in the little rocking chair on the hearth-stone, and we laughed and talked so merrily, and found so much to say: we planned where we would go, and what we would do in summer. I needn’t repeat that, because you would call it silly.
“One time, however, we were near quarrelling. He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. That was his most perfect idea of heaven’s happiness: mine was rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing, and bright white clouds flitting rapidly above; and not only larks, but throstles, and blackbirds, and linnets, and cuckoos pouring out music on every side, and the moors seen at a distance, broken into cool dusky dells; but close by great swells of long grass undulating in waves to the breeze; and woods and sounding water, and the whole world awake and wild with joy. He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine, and began to grow very snappish. At last, we agreed to try both, as soon as the right weather came; and then we kissed each other and were friends.
“After sitting still an hour, I looked at the great room with its smooth uncarpeted floor, and thought how nice it would be to play in, if we removed the table; and I asked Linton to call Zillah in to help us, and we’d have a game at blindman’s-buff; she should try to catch us: you used to, you know, Ellen. He wouldn’t: there was no pleasure in it, he said; but he consented to play at ball with me. We found two in a cupboard, among a heap of old toys, tops, and hoops, and battledores and shuttlecocks. One was marked C., and the other H.; I wished to have the C., because that stood for Catherine, and the H. might be for Heathcliff, his name; but the bran came out of H., and Linton didn’t like it. I beat him constantly; and he got cross again, and coughed, and returned to his chair. That night, though, he easily recovered his good humour: he was charmed with two or three pretty songs—your songs, Ellen; and when I was obliged to go, he begged and entreated me to come the following evening; and I promised. Minny and I went flying home as light as air; and I dreamt of Wuthering Heights and my sweet, darling cousin, till morning.
“On the morrow I was sad; partly because you were poorly, and partly that I wished my father knew, and approved of my excursions: but it was beautiful moonlight after tea; and, as I rode on, the gloom cleared. I shall have another happy evening, I thought to myself; and what delights me more, my pretty Linton will. I trotted up their garden, and was turning round to the back, when that fellow Earnshaw met me, took my bridle, and bid me go in by the front entrance. He patted Minny’s neck, and said she was a bonny beast, and appeared as if he wanted me to speak to him. I only told him to leave my horse alone, or else it would kick him. He answered in his vulgar accent, ‘It wouldn’t do mitch hurt if it did;’ and surveyed its legs with a smile. I was half inclined to make it try; however, he moved off to open the door, and, as he raised the latch, he looked up to the inscription above, and said, with a stupid mixture of awkwardness and elation: ‘Miss Catherine! I can read yon, now.’
“‘Wonderful,’ I exclaimed. ‘Pray let us hear you—you are grown clever!’
“He spelt, and drawled over by syllables, the name—‘Hareton Earnshaw.’
“‘And the figures?’ I cried, encouragingly, perceiving that he came to a dead halt.
“‘I cannot tell them yet,’ he answered.
“‘Oh, you dunce!’ I said, laughing heartily at his failure.
“The fool stared, with a grin hovering about his lips, and a scowl gathering over his eyes, as if uncertain whether he might not join in my mirth: whether it were not pleasant familiarity, or what it really was, contempt. I settled his doubts, by suddenly retrieving my gravity and desiring him to walk away, for I came to see Linton, not him. He reddened—I saw that by the moonlight—dropped his hand from the latch, and skulked off, a picture of mortified vanity. He imagined himself to be as accomplished as Linton, I suppose, because he could spell his own name; and was marvellously discomfited that I didn’t think the same.”
“Stop, Miss Catherine, dear!” I interrupted. “I shall not scold, but I don’t like your conduct there. If you had remembered that Hareton was your cousin as much as Master Heathcliff, you would have felt how improper it was to behave in that way. At least, it was praiseworthy ambition for him to desire to be as accomplished as Linton; and probably he did not learn merely to show off: you had made him ashamed of his ignorance before, I have no doubt; and he wished to remedy it and please you. To sneer at his imperfect attempt was very bad breeding. Had you been brought up in his circumstances, would you be less rude? He was as quick and as intelligent a child as ever you were; and I’m hurt that he should be despised now, because that base Heathcliff has treated him so unjustly.”
“Well, Ellen, you won’t cry about it, will you?” she exclaimed, surprised at my earnestness. “But wait, and you shall hear if he conned his A B C to please me; and if it were worth while being civil to the brute. I entered; Linton was lying on the settle, and half got up to welcome me.
“‘I’m ill to-night, Catherine, love,’ he said; ‘and you must have all the talk, and let me listen. Come, and sit by me. I was sure you wouldn’t break your word, and I’ll make you promise again, before you go.’
“I knew now that I mustn’t tease him, as he was ill; and I spoke softly and put no questions, and avoided irritating him in any way. I had brought some of my nicest books for him: he asked me to read a little of one, and I was about to comply, when Earnshaw burst the door open: having gathered venom with reflection. He advanced direct to us, seized Linton by the arm, and swung him off the seat.
“‘Get to thy own room!’ he said, in a voice almost inarticulate with passion; and his face looked swelled and furious. ‘Take her there if she comes to see thee: thou shalln’t keep me out of this. Begone wi’ ye both!’
“He swore at us, and left Linton no time to answer, nearly throwing him into the kitchen; and he clenched his fist as I followed, seemingly longing to knock me down. I was afraid for a moment, and I let one volume fall; he kicked it after me, and shut us out. I heard a malignant, crackly laugh by the fire, and turning, beheld that odious Joseph standing rubbing his bony hands, and quivering.
“‘I wer sure he’d sarve ye out! He’s a grand lad! He’s getten t’ raight sperrit in him! He knaws—ay, he knaws, as weel as I do, who sud be t’ maister yonder—Ech, ech, ech! He made ye skift properly! Ech, ech, ech!’
“‘Where must we go?’ I asked of my cousin, disregarding the old wretch’s mockery.
“Linton was white and trembling. He was not pretty then, Ellen: oh, no! he looked frightful; for his thin face and large eyes were wrought into an expression of frantic, powerless fury. He grasped the handle of the door, and shook it: it was fastened inside.
“‘If you don’t let me in, I’ll kill you!—If you don’t let me in, I’ll kill you!’ he rather shrieked than said. ‘Devil! devil!—I’ll kill you—I’ll kill you!’
“Joseph uttered his croaking laugh again.
“‘Thear, that’s t’ father!’ he cried. ‘That’s father! We’ve allas summut o’ either side in us. Niver heed, Hareton, lad—dunnut be ’feard—he cannot get at thee!’
“I took hold of Linton’s hands, and tried to pull him away; but he shrieked so shockingly that I dared not proceed. At last his cries were choked by a dreadful fit of coughing; blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell on the ground. I ran into the yard, sick with terror; and called for Zillah, as loud as I could. She soon heard me: she was milking the cows in a shed behind the barn, and hurrying from her work, she inquired what there was to do? I hadn’t breath to explain; dragging her in, I looked about for Linton. Earnshaw had come out to examine the mischief he had caused, and he was then conveying the poor thing upstairs. Zillah and I ascended after him; but he stopped me at the top of the steps, and said I shouldn’t go in: I must go home. I exclaimed that he had killed Linton, and I would enter. Joseph locked the door, and declared I should do ‘no sich stuff,’ and asked me whether I were ‘bahn to be as mad as him.’ I stood crying till the housekeeper reappeared. She affirmed he would be better in a bit, but he couldn’t do with that shrieking and din; and she took me, and nearly carried me into the house.
“Ellen, I was ready to tear my hair off my head! I sobbed and wept so that my eyes were almost blind; and the ruffian you have such sympathy with stood opposite: presuming every now and then to bid me ‘wisht,’ and denying that it was his fault; and, finally, frightened by my assertions that I would tell papa, and that he should be put in prison and hanged, he commenced blubbering himself, and hurried out to hide his cowardly agitation. Still, I was not rid of him: when at length they compelled me to depart, and I had got some hundred yards off the premises, he suddenly issued from the shadow of the road-side, and checked Minny and took hold of me.
“‘Miss Catherine, I’m ill grieved,’ he began, ‘but it’s rayther too bad—’
“I gave him a cut with my whip, thinking perhaps he would murder me. He let go, thundering one of his horrid curses, and I galloped home more than half out of my senses.
“I didn’t bid you good-night that evening, and I didn’t go to Wuthering Heights the next: I wished to go exceedingly; but I was strangely excited, and dreaded to hear that Linton was dead, sometimes; and sometimes shuddered at the thought of encountering Hareton. On the third day I took courage: at least, I couldn’t bear longer suspense, and stole off once more. I went at five o’clock, and walked; fancying I might manage to creep into the house, and up to Linton’s room, unobserved. However, the dogs gave notice of my approach. Zillah received me, and saying ‘the lad was mending nicely,’ showed me into a small, tidy, carpeted apartment, where, to my inexpressible joy, I beheld Linton laid on a little sofa, reading one of my books. But he would neither speak to me nor look at me, through a whole hour, Ellen: he has such an unhappy temper. And what quite confounded me, when he did open his mouth, it was to utter the falsehood that I had occasioned the uproar, and Hareton was not to blame! Unable to reply, except passionately, I got up and walked from the room. He sent after me a faint ‘Catherine!’ He did not reckon on being answered so: but I wouldn’t turn back; and the morrow was the second day on which I stayed at home, nearly determined to visit him no more. But it was so miserable going to bed and getting up, and never hearing anything about him, that my resolution melted into air before it was properly formed. It had appeared wrong to take the journey once; now it seemed wrong to refrain. Michael came to ask if he must saddle Minny; I said ‘Yes,’ and considered myself doing a duty as she bore me over the hills. I was forced to pass the front windows to get to the court: it was no use trying to conceal my presence.
“‘Young master is in the house,’ said Zillah, as she saw me making for the parlour. I went in; Earnshaw was there also, but he quitted the room directly. Linton sat in the great arm-chair half asleep; walking up to the fire, I began in a serious tone, partly meaning it to be true—
“‘As you don’t like me, Linton, and as you think I come on purpose to hurt you, and pretend that I do so every time, this is our last meeting: let us say good-bye; and tell Mr. Heathcliff that you have no wish to see me, and that he mustn’t invent any more falsehoods on the subject.’
“‘Sit down and take your hat off, Catherine,’ he answered. ‘You are so much happier than I am, you ought to be better. Papa talks enough of my defects, and shows enough scorn of me, to make it natural I should doubt myself. I doubt whether I am not altogether as worthless as he calls me, frequently; and then I feel so cross and bitter, I hate everybody! I am worthless, and bad in temper, and bad in spirit, almost always; and, if you choose, you may say good-bye: you’ll get rid of an annoyance. Only, Catherine, do me this justice: believe that if I might be as sweet, and as kind, and as good as you are, I would be; as willingly, and more so, than as happy and as healthy. And believe that your kindness has made me love you deeper than if I deserved your love: and though I couldn’t, and cannot help showing my nature to you, I regret it and repent it; and shall regret and repent it till I die!’
“I felt he spoke the truth; and I felt I must forgive him: and, though we should quarrel the next moment, I must forgive him again. We were reconciled; but we cried, both of us, the whole time I stayed: not entirely for sorrow; yet I was sorry Linton had that distorted nature. He’ll never let his friends be at ease, and he’ll never be at ease himself! I have always gone to his little parlour, since that night; because his father returned the day after.
“About three times, I think, we have been merry and hopeful, as we were the first evening; the rest of my visits were dreary and troubled: now with his selfishness and spite, and now with his sufferings: but I’ve learned to endure the former with nearly as little resentment as the latter. Mr. Heathcliff purposely avoids me: I have hardly seen him at all. Last Sunday, indeed, coming earlier than usual, I heard him abusing poor Linton cruelly for his conduct of the night before. I can’t tell how he knew of it, unless he listened. Linton had certainly behaved provokingly: however, it was the business of nobody but me, and I interrupted Mr. Heathcliff’s lecture by entering and telling him so. He burst into a laugh, and went away, saying he was glad I took that view of the matter. Since then, I’ve told Linton he must whisper his bitter things. Now, Ellen, you have heard all. I can’t be prevented from going to Wuthering Heights, except by inflicting misery on two people; whereas, if you’ll only not tell papa, my going need disturb the tranquillity of none. You’ll not tell, will you? It will be very heartless, if you do.”
“I’ll make up my mind on that point by to-morrow, Miss Catherine,” I replied. “It requires some study; and so I’ll leave you to your rest, and go think it over.”
I thought it over aloud, in my master’s presence; walking straight from her room to his, and relating the whole story: with the exception of her conversations with her cousin, and any mention of Hareton. Mr. Linton was alarmed and distressed, more than he would acknowledge to me. In the morning, Catherine learnt my betrayal of her confidence, and she learnt also that her secret visits were to end. In vain she wept and writhed against the interdict, and implored her father to have pity on Linton: all she got to comfort her was a promise that he would write and give him leave to come to the Grange when he pleased; but explaining that he must no longer expect to see Catherine at Wuthering Heights. Perhaps, had he been aware of his nephew’s disposition and state of health, he would have seen fit to withhold even that slight consolation.
CHAPTER XXV
“These things happened last winter, sir,” said Mrs. Dean; “hardly more than a year ago. Last winter, I did not think, at another twelve months’ end, I should be amusing a stranger to the family with relating them! Yet, who knows how long you’ll be a stranger? You’re too young to rest always contented, living by yourself; and I some way fancy no one could see Catherine Linton and not love her. You smile; but why do you look so lively and interested when I talk about her? and why have you asked me to hang her picture over your fireplace? and why—?”
“Stop, my good friend!” I cried. “It may be very possible that I should love her; but would she love me? I doubt it too much to venture my tranquillity by running into temptation: and then my home is not here. I’m of the busy world, and to its arms I must return. Go on. Was Catherine obedient to her father’s commands?”
“She was,” continued the housekeeper. “Her affection for him was still the chief sentiment in her heart; and he spoke without anger: he spoke in the deep tenderness of one about to leave his treasure amid perils and foes, where his remembered words would be the only aid that he could bequeath to guide her. He said to me, a few days afterwards, ‘I wish my nephew would write, Ellen, or call. Tell me, sincerely, what you think of him: is he changed for the better, or is there a prospect of improvement, as he grows a man?’
“‘He’s very delicate, sir,’ I replied; ‘and scarcely likely to reach manhood: but this I can say, he does not resemble his father; and if Miss Catherine had the misfortune to marry him, he would not be beyond her control: unless she were extremely and foolishly indulgent. However, master, you’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted with him and see whether he would suit her: it wants four years and more to his being of age.’”
Edgar sighed; and, walking to the window, looked out towards Gimmerton Kirk. It was a misty afternoon, but the February sun shone dimly, and we could just distinguish the two fir-trees in the yard, and the sparely-scattered gravestones.
“I’ve prayed often,” he half soliloquised, “for the approach of what is coming; and now I begin to shrink, and fear it. I thought the memory of the hour I came down that glen a bridegroom would be less sweet than the anticipation that I was soon, in a few months, or, possibly, weeks, to be carried up, and laid in its lonely hollow! Ellen, I’ve been very happy with my little Cathy: through winter nights and summer days she was a living hope at my side. But I’ve been as happy musing by myself among those stones, under that old church: lying, through the long June evenings, on the green mound of her mother’s grave, and wishing—yearning for the time when I might lie beneath it. What can I do for Cathy? How must I quit her? I’d not care one moment for Linton being Heathcliff’s son; nor for his taking her from me, if he could console her for my loss. I’d not care that Heathcliff gained his ends, and triumphed in robbing me of my last blessing! But should Linton be unworthy—only a feeble tool to his father—I cannot abandon her to him! And, hard though it be to crush her buoyant spirit, I must persevere in making her sad while I live, and leaving her solitary when I die. Darling! I’d rather resign her to God, and lay her in the earth before me.”
“Resign her to God as it is, sir,” I answered, “and if we should lose you—which may He forbid—under His providence, I’ll stand her friend and counsellor to the last. Miss Catherine is a good girl: I don’t fear that she will go wilfully wrong; and people who do their duty are always finally rewarded.”
Spring advanced; yet my master gathered no real strength, though he resumed his walks in the grounds with his daughter. To her inexperienced notions, this itself was a sign of convalescence; and then his cheek was often flushed, and his eyes were bright; she felt sure of his recovering. On her seventeenth birthday, he did not visit the churchyard: it was raining, and I observed—
“You’ll surely not go out to-night, sir?”
He answered,—“No, I’ll defer it this year a little longer.”
He wrote again to Linton, expressing his great desire to see him; and, had the invalid been presentable, I’ve no doubt his father would have permitted him to come. As it was, being instructed, he returned an answer, intimating that Mr. Heathcliff objected to his calling at the Grange; but his uncle’s kind remembrance delighted him, and he hoped to meet him sometimes in his rambles, and personally to petition that his cousin and he might not remain long so utterly divided.
That part of his letter was simple, and probably his own. Heathcliff knew he could plead eloquently for Catherine’s company, then.
“I do not ask,” he said, “that she may visit here; but am I never to see her, because my father forbids me to go to her home, and you forbid her to come to mine? Do, now and then, ride with her towards the Heights; and let us exchange a few words, in your presence! We have done nothing to deserve this separation; and you are not angry with me: you have no reason to dislike me, you allow, yourself. Dear uncle! send me a kind note to-morrow, and leave to join you anywhere you please, except at Thrushcross Grange. I believe an interview would convince you that my father’s character is not mine: he affirms I am more your nephew than his son; and though I have faults which render me unworthy of Catherine, she has excused them, and for her sake, you should also. You inquire after my health—it is better; but while I remain cut off from all hope, and doomed to solitude, or the society of those who never did and never will like me, how can I be cheerful and well?”
Edgar, though he felt for the boy, could not consent to grant his request; because he could not accompany Catherine. He said, in summer, perhaps, they might meet: meantime, he wished him to continue writing at intervals, and engaged to give him what advice and comfort he was able by letter; being well aware of his hard position in his family. Linton complied; and had he been unrestrained, would probably have spoiled all by filling his epistles with complaints and lamentations: but his father kept a sharp watch over him; and, of course, insisted on every line that my master sent being shown; so, instead of penning his peculiar personal sufferings and distresses, the themes constantly uppermost in his thoughts, he harped on the cruel obligation of being held asunder from his friend and love; and gently intimated that Mr. Linton must allow an interview soon, or he should fear he was purposely deceiving him with empty promises.
Cathy was a powerful ally at home; and between them they at length persuaded my master to acquiesce in their having a ride or a walk together about once a week, under my guardianship, and on the moors nearest the Grange: for June found him still declining. Though he had set aside yearly a portion of his income for my young lady’s fortune, he had a natural desire that she might retain—or at least return in a short time to—the house of her ancestors; and he considered her only prospect of doing that was by a union with his heir; he had no idea that the latter was failing almost as fast as himself; nor had any one, I believe: no doctor visited the Heights, and no one saw Master Heathcliff to make report of his condition among us. I, for my part, began to fancy my forebodings were false, and that he must be actually rallying, when he mentioned riding and walking on the moors, and seemed so earnest in pursuing his object. I could not picture a father treating a dying child as tyrannically and wickedly as I afterwards learned Heathcliff had treated him, to compel this apparent eagerness: his efforts redoubling the more imminently his avaricious and unfeeling plans were threatened with defeat by death.
CHAPTER XXVI
Summer was already past its prime, when Edgar reluctantly yielded his assent to their entreaties, and Catherine and I set out on our first ride to join her cousin. It was a close, sultry day: devoid of sunshine, but with a sky too dappled and hazy to threaten rain: and our place of meeting had been fixed at the guide-stone, by the cross-roads. On arriving there, however, a little herd-boy, despatched as a messenger, told us that,—“Maister Linton wer just o’ this side th’ Heights: and he’d be mitch obleeged to us to gang on a bit further.”
“Then Master Linton has forgot the first injunction of his uncle,” I observed: “he bid us keep on the Grange land, and here we are off at once.”
“Well, we’ll turn our horses’ heads round when we reach him,” answered my companion; “our excursion shall lie towards home.”
But when we reached him, and that was scarcely a quarter of a mile from his own door, we found he had no horse; and we were forced to dismount, and leave ours to graze. He lay on the heath, awaiting our approach, and did not rise till we came within a few yards. Then he walked so feebly, and looked so pale, that I immediately exclaimed,—“Why, Master Heathcliff, you are not fit for enjoying a ramble this morning. How ill you do look!”
Catherine surveyed him with grief and astonishment: she changed the ejaculation of joy on her lips to one of alarm; and the congratulation on their long-postponed meeting to an anxious inquiry, whether he were worse than usual?
“No—better—better!” he panted, trembling, and retaining her hand as if he needed its support, while his large blue eyes wandered timidly over her; the hollowness round them transforming to haggard wildness the languid expression they once possessed.
“But you have been worse,” persisted his cousin; “worse than when I saw you last; you are thinner, and—”
“I’m tired,” he interrupted, hurriedly. “It is too hot for walking, let us rest here. And, in the morning, I often feel sick—papa says I grow so fast.”
Badly satisfied, Cathy sat down, and he reclined beside her.
“This is something like your paradise,” said she, making an effort at cheerfulness. “You recollect the two days we agreed to spend in the place and way each thought pleasantest? This is nearly yours, only there are clouds; but then they are so soft and mellow: it is nicer than sunshine. Next week, if you can, we’ll ride down to the Grange Park, and try mine.”
Linton did not appear to remember what she talked of; and he had evidently great difficulty in sustaining any kind of conversation. His lack of interest in the subjects she started, and his equal incapacity to contribute to her entertainment, were so obvious that she could not conceal her disappointment. An indefinite alteration had come over his whole person and manner. The pettishness that might be caressed into fondness, had yielded to a listless apathy; there was less of the peevish temper of a child which frets and teases on purpose to be soothed, and more of the self-absorbed moroseness of a confirmed invalid, repelling consolation, and ready to regard the good-humoured mirth of others as an insult. Catherine perceived, as well as I did, that he held it rather a punishment, than a gratification, to endure our company; and she made no scruple of proposing, presently, to depart. That proposal, unexpectedly, roused Linton from his lethargy, and threw him into a strange state of agitation. He glanced fearfully towards the Heights, begging she would remain another half-hour, at least.
“But I think,” said Cathy, “you’d be more comfortable at home than sitting here; and I cannot amuse you to-day, I see, by my tales, and songs, and chatter: you have grown wiser than I, in these six months; you have little taste for my diversions now: or else, if I could amuse you, I’d willingly stay.”
“Stay to rest yourself,” he replied. “And, Catherine, don’t think or say that I’m very unwell: it is the heavy weather and heat that make me dull; and I walked about, before you came, a great deal for me. Tell uncle I’m in tolerable health, will you?”
“I’ll tell him that you say so, Linton. I couldn’t affirm that you are,” observed my young lady, wondering at his pertinacious assertion of what was evidently an untruth.
“And be here again next Thursday,” continued he, shunning her puzzled gaze. “And give him my thanks for permitting you to come—my best thanks, Catherine. And—and, if you did meet my father, and he asked you about me, don’t lead him to suppose that I’ve been extremely silent and stupid: don’t look sad and downcast, as you are doing—he’ll be angry.”
“I care nothing for his anger,” exclaimed Cathy, imagining she would be its object.
“But I do,” said her cousin, shuddering. “Don’t provoke him against me, Catherine, for he is very hard.”
“Is he severe to you, Master Heathcliff?” I inquired. “Has he grown weary of indulgence, and passed from passive to active hatred?”
Linton looked at me, but did not answer; and, after keeping her seat by his side another ten minutes, during which his head fell drowsily on his breast, and he uttered nothing except suppressed moans of exhaustion or pain, Cathy began to seek solace in looking for bilberries, and sharing the produce of her researches with me: she did not offer them to him, for she saw further notice would only weary and annoy.
“Is it half-an-hour now, Ellen?” she whispered in my ear, at last. “I can’t tell why we should stay. He’s asleep, and papa will be wanting us back.”
“Well, we must not leave him asleep,” I answered; “wait till he wakes, and be patient. You were mighty eager to set off, but your longing to see poor Linton has soon evaporated!”
“Why did he wish to see me?” returned Catherine. “In his crossest humours, formerly, I liked him better than I do in his present curious mood. It’s just as if it were a task he was compelled to perform—this interview—for fear his father should scold him. But I’m hardly going to come to give Mr. Heathcliff pleasure; whatever reason he may have for ordering Linton to undergo this penance. And, though I’m glad he’s better in health, I’m sorry he’s so much less pleasant, and so much less affectionate to me.”
“You think he is better in health, then?” I said.
“Yes,” she answered; “because he always made such a great deal of his sufferings, you know. He is not tolerably well, as he told me to tell papa; but he’s better, very likely.”
“There you differ with me, Miss Cathy,” I remarked; “I should conjecture him to be far worse.”
Linton here started from his slumber in bewildered terror, and asked if any one had called his name.
“No,” said Catherine; “unless in dreams. I cannot conceive how you manage to doze out of doors, in the morning.”
“I thought I heard my father,” he gasped, glancing up to the frowning nab above us. “You are sure nobody spoke?”
“Quite sure,” replied his cousin. “Only Ellen and I were disputing concerning your health. Are you truly stronger, Linton, than when we separated in winter? If you be, I’m certain one thing is not stronger—your regard for me: speak,—are you?”
The tears gushed from Linton’s eyes as he answered, “Yes, yes, I am!” And, still under the spell of the imaginary voice, his gaze wandered up and down to detect its owner.
Cathy rose. “For to-day we must part,” she said. “And I won’t conceal that I have been sadly disappointed with our meeting; though I’ll mention it to nobody but you: not that I stand in awe of Mr. Heathcliff.”
“Hush,” murmured Linton; “for God’s sake, hush! He’s coming.” And he clung to Catherine’s arm, striving to detain her; but at that announcement she hastily disengaged herself, and whistled to Minny, who obeyed her like a dog.
“I’ll be here next Thursday,” she cried, springing to the saddle. “Good-bye. Quick, Ellen!”
And so we left him, scarcely conscious of our departure, so absorbed was he in anticipating his father’s approach.
Before we reached home, Catherine’s displeasure softened into a perplexed sensation of pity and regret, largely blended with vague, uneasy doubts about Linton’s actual circumstances, physical and social: in which I partook, though I counselled her not to say much; for a second journey would make us better judges. My master requested an account of our ongoings. His nephew’s offering of thanks was duly delivered, Miss Cathy gently touching on the rest: I also threw little light on his inquiries, for I hardly knew what to hide and what to reveal.
CHAPTER XXVII
Seven days glided away, every one marking its course by the henceforth rapid alteration of Edgar Linton’s state. The havoc that months had previously wrought was now emulated by the inroads of hours. Catherine we would fain have deluded yet; but her own quick spirit refused to delude her: it divined in secret, and brooded on the dreadful probability, gradually ripening into certainty. She had not the heart to mention her ride, when Thursday came round; I mentioned it for her, and obtained permission to order her out of doors: for the library, where her father stopped a short time daily—the brief period he could bear to sit up—and his chamber, had become her whole world. She grudged each moment that did not find her bending over his pillow, or seated by his side. Her countenance grew wan with watching and sorrow, and my master gladly dismissed her to what he flattered himself would be a happy change of scene and society; drawing comfort from the hope that she would not now be left entirely alone after his death.
He had a fixed idea, I guessed by several observations he let fall, that, as his nephew resembled him in person, he would resemble him in mind; for Linton’s letters bore few or no indications of his defective character. And I, through pardonable weakness, refrained from correcting the error; asking myself what good there would be in disturbing his last moments with information that he had neither power nor opportunity to turn to account.
We deferred our excursion till the afternoon; a golden afternoon of August: every breath from the hills so full of life, that it seemed whoever respired it, though dying, might revive. Catherine’s face was just like the landscape—shadows and sunshine flitting over it in rapid succession; but the shadows rested longer, and the sunshine was more transient; and her poor little heart reproached itself for even that passing forgetfulness of its cares.
We discerned Linton watching at the same spot he had selected before. My young mistress alighted, and told me that, as she was resolved to stay a very little while, I had better hold the pony and remain on horseback; but I dissented: I wouldn’t risk losing sight of the charge committed to me a minute; so we climbed the slope of heath together. Master Heathcliff received us with greater animation on this occasion: not the animation of high spirits though, nor yet of joy; it looked more like fear.
“It is late!” he said, speaking short and with difficulty. “Is not your father very ill? I thought you wouldn’t come.”
“Why won’t you be candid?” cried Catherine, swallowing her greeting. “Why cannot you say at once you don’t want me? It is strange, Linton, that for the second time you have brought me here on purpose, apparently to distress us both, and for no reason besides!”
Linton shivered, and glanced at her, half supplicating, half ashamed; but his cousin’s patience was not sufficient to endure this enigmatical behaviour.
“My father is very ill,” she said; “and why am I called from his bedside? Why didn’t you send to absolve me from my promise, when you wished I wouldn’t keep it? Come! I desire an explanation: playing and trifling are completely banished out of my mind; and I can’t dance attendance on your affectations now!”
“My affectations!” he murmured; “what are they? For heaven’s sake, Catherine, don’t look so angry! Despise me as much as you please; I am a worthless, cowardly wretch: I can’t be scorned enough; but I’m too mean for your anger. Hate my father, and spare me for contempt.”
“Nonsense!” cried Catherine in a passion. “Foolish, silly boy! And there! he trembles, as if I were really going to touch him! You needn’t bespeak contempt, Linton: anybody will have it spontaneously at your service. Get off! I shall return home: it is folly dragging you from the hearth-stone, and pretending—what do we pretend? Let go my frock! If I pitied you for crying and looking so very frightened, you should spurn such pity. Ellen, tell him how disgraceful this conduct is. Rise, and don’t degrade yourself into an abject reptile—don’t!”
With streaming face and an expression of agony, Linton had thrown his nerveless frame along the ground: he seemed convulsed with exquisite terror.
“Oh!” he sobbed, “I cannot bear it! Catherine, Catherine, I’m a traitor, too, and I dare not tell you! But leave me, and I shall be killed! Dear Catherine, my life is in your hands: and you have said you loved me, and if you did, it wouldn’t harm you. You’ll not go, then? kind, sweet, good Catherine! And perhaps you will consent—and he’ll let me die with you!”
My young lady, on witnessing his intense anguish, stooped to raise him. The old feeling of indulgent tenderness overcame her vexation, and she grew thoroughly moved and alarmed.
“Consent to what?” she asked. “To stay! tell me the meaning of this strange talk, and I will. You contradict your own words, and distract me! Be calm and frank, and confess at once all that weighs on your heart. You wouldn’t injure me, Linton, would you? You wouldn’t let any enemy hurt me, if you could prevent it? I’ll believe you are a coward, for yourself, but not a cowardly betrayer of your best friend.”
“But my father threatened me,” gasped the boy, clasping his attenuated fingers, “and I dread him—I dread him! I dare not tell!”
“Oh, well!” said Catherine, with scornful compassion, “keep your secret: I’m no coward. Save yourself: I’m not afraid!”
Her magnanimity provoked his tears: he wept wildly, kissing her supporting hands, and yet could not summon courage to speak out. I was cogitating what the mystery might be, and determined Catherine should never suffer to benefit him or any one else, by my good will; when, hearing a rustle among the ling, I looked up and saw Mr. Heathcliff almost close upon us, descending the Heights. He didn’t cast a glance towards my companions, though they were sufficiently near for Linton’s sobs to be audible; but hailing me in the almost hearty tone he assumed to none besides, and the sincerity of which I couldn’t avoid doubting, he said—
“It is something to see you so near to my house, Nelly. How are you at the Grange? Let us hear. The rumour goes,” he added, in a lower tone, “that Edgar Linton is on his death-bed: perhaps they exaggerate his illness?”
“No; my master is dying,” I replied: “it is true enough. A sad thing it will be for us all, but a blessing for him!”
“How long will he last, do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Because,” he continued, looking at the two young people, who were fixed under his eye—Linton appeared as if he could not venture to stir or raise his head, and Catherine could not move, on his account—“because that lad yonder seems determined to beat me; and I’d thank his uncle to be quick, and go before him! Hallo! has the whelp been playing that game long? I did give him some lessons about snivelling. Is he pretty lively with Miss Linton generally?”
“Lively? no—he has shown the greatest distress,” I answered. “To see him, I should say, that instead of rambling with his sweetheart on the hills, he ought to be in bed, under the hands of a doctor.”
“He shall be, in a day or two,” muttered Heathcliff. “But first—get up, Linton! Get up!” he shouted. “Don’t grovel on the ground there: up, this moment!”
Linton had sunk prostrate again in another paroxysm of helpless fear, caused by his father’s glance towards him, I suppose: there was nothing else to produce such humiliation. He made several efforts to obey, but his little strength was annihilated for the time, and he fell back again with a moan. Mr. Heathcliff advanced, and lifted him to lean against a ridge of turf.
“Now,” said he, with curbed ferocity, “I’m getting angry—and if you don’t command that paltry spirit of yours—damn you! get up directly!”
“I will, father,” he panted. “Only, let me alone, or I shall faint. I’ve done as you wished, I’m sure. Catherine will tell you that I—that I—have been cheerful. Ah! keep by me, Catherine; give me your hand.”
“Take mine,” said his father; “stand on your feet. There now—she’ll lend you her arm: that’s right, look at her. You would imagine I was the devil himself, Miss Linton, to excite such horror. Be so kind as to walk home with him, will you? He shudders if I touch him.”
“Linton dear!” whispered Catherine, “I can’t go to Wuthering Heights: papa has forbidden me. He’ll not harm you: why are you so afraid?”
“I can never re-enter that house,” he answered. “I’m not to re-enter it without you!”
“Stop!” cried his father. “We’ll respect Catherine’s filial scruples. Nelly, take him in, and I’ll follow your advice concerning the doctor, without delay.”
“You’ll do well,” replied I. “But I must remain with my mistress: to mind your son is not my business.”
“You are very stiff,” said Heathcliff, “I know that: but you’ll force me to pinch the baby and make it scream before it moves your charity. Come, then, my hero. Are you willing to return, escorted by me?”
He approached once more, and made as if he would seize the fragile being; but, shrinking back, Linton clung to his cousin, and implored her to accompany him, with a frantic importunity that admitted no denial. However I disapproved, I couldn’t hinder her: indeed, how could she have refused him herself? What was filling him with dread we had no means of discerning; but there he was, powerless under its gripe, and any addition seemed capable of shocking him into idiocy. We reached the threshold; Catherine walked in, and I stood waiting till she had conducted the invalid to a chair, expecting her out immediately; when Mr. Heathcliff, pushing me forward, exclaimed—“My house is not stricken with the plague, Nelly; and I have a mind to be hospitable to-day: sit down, and allow me to shut the door.”
He shut and locked it also. I started.
“You shall have tea before you go home,” he added. “I am by myself. Hareton is gone with some cattle to the Lees, and Zillah and Joseph are off on a journey of pleasure; and, though I’m used to being alone, I’d rather have some interesting company, if I can get it. Miss Linton, take your seat by him. I give you what I have: the present is hardly worth accepting; but I have nothing else to offer. It is Linton, I mean. How she does stare! It’s odd what a savage feeling I have to anything that seems afraid of me! Had I been born where laws are less strict and tastes less dainty, I should treat myself to a slow vivisection of those two, as an evening’s amusement.”
He drew in his breath, struck the table, and swore to himself, “By hell! I hate them.”
“I am not afraid of you!” exclaimed Catherine, who could not hear the latter part of his speech. She stepped close up; her black eyes flashing with passion and resolution. “Give me that key: I will have it!” she said. “I wouldn’t eat or drink here, if I were starving.”
Heathcliff had the key in his hand that remained on the table. He looked up, seized with a sort of surprise at her boldness; or, possibly, reminded, by her voice and glance, of the person from whom she inherited it. She snatched at the instrument, and half succeeded in getting it out of his loosened fingers: but her action recalled him to the present; he recovered it speedily.
“Now, Catherine Linton,” he said, “stand off, or I shall knock you down; and that will make Mrs. Dean mad.”
Regardless of this warning, she captured his closed hand and its contents again. “We will go!” she repeated, exerting her utmost efforts to cause the iron muscles to relax; and finding that her nails made no impression, she applied her teeth pretty sharply. Heathcliff glanced at me a glance that kept me from interfering a moment. Catherine was too intent on his fingers to notice his face. He opened them suddenly, and resigned the object of dispute; but, ere she had well secured it, he seized her with the liberated hand, and, pulling her on his knee, administered with the other a shower of terrific slaps on both sides of the head, each sufficient to have fulfilled his threat, had she been able to fall.
At this diabolical violence I rushed on him furiously. “You villain!” I began to cry, “you villain!” A touch on the chest silenced me: I am stout, and soon put out of breath; and, what with that and the rage, I staggered dizzily back, and felt ready to suffocate, or to burst a blood-vessel. The scene was over in two minutes; Catherine, released, put her two hands to her temples, and looked just as if she were not sure whether her ears were off or on. She trembled like a reed, poor thing, and leant against the table perfectly bewildered.
“I know how to chastise children, you see,” said the scoundrel, grimly, as he stooped to repossess himself of the key, which had dropped to the floor. “Go to Linton now, as I told you; and cry at your ease! I shall be your father, to-morrow—all the father you’ll have in a few days—and you shall have plenty of that. You can bear plenty; you’re no weakling: you shall have a daily taste, if I catch such a devil of a temper in your eyes again!”
Cathy ran to me instead of Linton, and knelt down and put her burning cheek on my lap, weeping aloud. Her cousin had shrunk into a corner of the settle, as quiet as a mouse, congratulating himself, I dare say, that the correction had alighted on another than him. Mr. Heathcliff, perceiving us all confounded, rose, and expeditiously made the tea himself. The cups and saucers were laid ready. He poured it out, and handed me a cup.
“Wash away your spleen,” he said. “And help your own naughty pet and mine. It is not poisoned, though I prepared it. I’m going out to seek your horses.”
Our first thought, on his departure, was to force an exit somewhere. We tried the kitchen door, but that was fastened outside: we looked at the windows—they were too narrow for even Cathy’s little figure.
“Master Linton,” I cried, seeing we were regularly imprisoned, “you know what your diabolical father is after, and you shall tell us, or I’ll box your ears, as he has done your cousin’s.”
“Yes, Linton, you must tell,” said Catherine. “It was for your sake I came; and it will be wickedly ungrateful if you refuse.”
“Give me some tea, I’m thirsty, and then I’ll tell you,” he answered. “Mrs. Dean, go away. I don’t like you standing over me. Now, Catherine, you are letting your tears fall into my cup. I won’t drink that. Give me another.”
Catherine pushed another to him, and wiped her face. I felt disgusted at the little wretch’s composure, since he was no longer in terror for himself. The anguish he had exhibited on the moor subsided as soon as ever he entered Wuthering Heights; so I guessed he had been menaced with an awful visitation of wrath if he failed in decoying us there; and, that accomplished, he had no further immediate fears.
“Papa wants us to be married,” he continued, after sipping some of the liquid. “And he knows your papa wouldn’t let us marry now; and he’s afraid of my dying if we wait; so we are to be married in the morning, and you are to stay here all night; and, if you do as he wishes, you shall return home next day, and take me with you.”
“Take you with her, pitiful changeling!” I exclaimed. “You marry? Why, the man is mad! or he thinks us fools, every one. And do you imagine that beautiful young lady, that healthy, hearty girl, will tie herself to a little perishing monkey like you? Are you cherishing the notion that anybody, let alone Miss Catherine Linton, would have you for a husband? You want whipping for bringing us in here at all, with your dastardly puling tricks: and—don’t look so silly, now! I’ve a very good mind to shake you severely, for your contemptible treachery, and your imbecile conceit.”
I did give him a slight shaking; but it brought on the cough, and he took to his ordinary resource of moaning and weeping, and Catherine rebuked me.
“Stay all night? No,” she said, looking slowly round. “Ellen, I’ll burn that door down but I’ll get out.”
And she would have commenced the execution of her threat directly, but Linton was up in alarm for his dear self again. He clasped her in his two feeble arms sobbing:—“Won’t you have me, and save me? not let me come to the Grange? Oh, darling Catherine! you mustn’t go and leave, after all. You must obey my father—you must!”
“I must obey my own,” she replied, “and relieve him from this cruel suspense. The whole night! What would he think? He’ll be distressed already. I’ll either break or burn a way out of the house. Be quiet! You’re in no danger; but if you hinder me—Linton, I love papa better than you!”
The mortal terror he felt of Mr. Heathcliff’s anger restored to the boy his coward’s eloquence. Catherine was near distraught: still, she persisted that she must go home, and tried entreaty in her turn, persuading him to subdue his selfish agony. While they were thus occupied, our jailor re-entered.
“Your beasts have trotted off,” he said, “and—now Linton! snivelling again? What has she been doing to you? Come, come—have done, and get to bed. In a month or two, my lad, you’ll be able to pay her back her present tyrannies with a vigorous hand. You’re pining for pure love, are you not? nothing else in the world: and she shall have you! There, to bed! Zillah won’t be here to-night; you must undress yourself. Hush! hold your noise! Once in your own room, I’ll not come near you: you needn’t fear. By chance, you’ve managed tolerably. I’ll look to the rest.”
He spoke these words, holding the door open for his son to pass, and the latter achieved his exit exactly as a spaniel might which suspected the person who attended on it of designing a spiteful squeeze. The lock was re-secured. Heathcliff approached the fire, where my mistress and I stood silent. Catherine looked up, and instinctively raised her hand to her cheek: his neighbourhood revived a painful sensation. Anybody else would have been incapable of regarding the childish act with sternness, but he scowled on her and muttered—“Oh! you are not afraid of me? Your courage is well disguised: you seem damnably afraid!”
“I am afraid now,” she replied, “because, if I stay, papa will be miserable: and how can I endure making him miserable—when he—when he—Mr. Heathcliff, let me go home! I promise to marry Linton: papa would like me to: and I love him. Why should you wish to force me to do what I’ll willingly do of myself?”
“Let him dare to force you,” I cried. “There’s law in the land, thank God! there is; though we be in an out-of-the-way place. I’d inform if he were my own son: and it’s felony without benefit of clergy!”
“Silence!” said the ruffian. “To the devil with your clamour! I don’t want you to speak. Miss Linton, I shall enjoy myself remarkably in thinking your father will be miserable: I shall not sleep for satisfaction. You could have hit on no surer way of fixing your residence under my roof for the next twenty-four hours than informing me that such an event would follow. As to your promise to marry Linton, I’ll take care you shall keep it; for you shall not quit this place till it is fulfilled.”
“Send Ellen, then, to let papa know I’m safe!” exclaimed Catherine, weeping bitterly. “Or marry me now. Poor papa! Ellen, he’ll think we’re lost. What shall we do?”
“Not he! He’ll think you are tired of waiting on him, and run off for a little amusement,” answered Heathcliff. “You cannot deny that you entered my house of your own accord, in contempt of his injunctions to the contrary. And it is quite natural that you should desire amusement at your age; and that you would weary of nursing a sick man, and that man only your father. Catherine, his happiest days were over when your days began. He cursed you, I dare say, for coming into the world (I did, at least); and it would just do if he cursed you as he went out of it. I’d join him. I don’t love you! How should I? Weep away. As far as I can see, it will be your chief diversion hereafter; unless Linton make amends for other losses: and your provident parent appears to fancy he may. His letters of advice and consolation entertained me vastly. In his last he recommended my jewel to be careful of his; and kind to her when he got her. Careful and kind—that’s paternal. But Linton requires his whole stock of care and kindness for himself. Linton can play the little tyrant well. He’ll undertake to torture any number of cats, if their teeth be drawn and their claws pared. You’ll be able to tell his uncle fine tales of his kindness, when you get home again, I assure you.”
“You’re right there!” I said; “explain your son’s character. Show his resemblance to yourself: and then, I hope, Miss Cathy will think twice before she takes the cockatrice!”
“I don’t much mind speaking of his amiable qualities now,” he answered; “because she must either accept him or remain a prisoner, and you along with her, till your master dies. I can detain you both, quite concealed, here. If you doubt, encourage her to retract her word, and you’ll have an opportunity of judging!”
“I’ll not retract my word,” said Catherine. “I’ll marry him within this hour, if I may go to Thrushcross Grange afterwards. Mr. Heathcliff, you’re a cruel man, but you’re not a fiend; and you won’t, from mere malice, destroy irrevocably all my happiness. If papa thought I had left him on purpose, and if he died before I returned, could I bear to live? I’ve given over crying: but I’m going to kneel here, at your knee; and I’ll not get up, and I’ll not take my eyes from your face till you look back at me! No, don’t turn away! do look! you’ll see nothing to provoke you. I don’t hate you. I’m not angry that you struck me. Have you never loved anybody in all your life, uncle? never? Ah! you must look once. I’m so wretched, you can’t help being sorry and pitying me.”
“Keep your eft’s fingers off; and move, or I’ll kick you!” cried Heathcliff, brutally repulsing her. “I’d rather be hugged by a snake. How the devil can you dream of fawning on me? I detest you!”
He shrugged his shoulders: shook himself, indeed, as if his flesh crept with aversion; and thrust back his chair; while I got up, and opened my mouth, to commence a downright torrent of abuse. But I was rendered dumb in the middle of the first sentence, by a threat that I should be shown into a room by myself the very next syllable I uttered. It was growing dark—we heard a sound of voices at the garden-gate. Our host hurried out instantly: he had his wits about him; we had not. There was a talk of two or three minutes, and he returned alone.
“I thought it had been your cousin Hareton,” I observed to Catherine. “I wish he would arrive! Who knows but he might take our part?”
“It was three servants sent to seek you from the Grange,” said Heathcliff, overhearing me. “You should have opened a lattice and called out: but I could swear that chit is glad you didn’t. She’s glad to be obliged to stay, I’m certain.”
At learning the chance we had missed, we both gave vent to our grief without control; and he allowed us to wail on till nine o’clock. Then he bid us go upstairs, through the kitchen, to Zillah’s chamber; and I whispered my companion to obey: perhaps we might contrive to get through the window there, or into a garret, and out by its skylight. The window, however, was narrow, like those below, and the garret trap was safe from our attempts; for we were fastened in as before. We neither of us lay down: Catherine took her station by the lattice, and watched anxiously for morning; a deep sigh being the only answer I could obtain to my frequent entreaties that she would try to rest. I seated myself in a chair, and rocked to and fro, passing harsh judgment on my many derelictions of duty; from which, it struck me then, all the misfortunes of my employers sprang. It was not the case, in reality, I am aware; but it was, in my imagination, that dismal night; and I thought Heathcliff himself less guilty than I.
At seven o’clock he came, and inquired if Miss Linton had risen. She ran to the door immediately, and answered, “Yes.” “Here, then,” he said, opening it, and pulling her out. I rose to follow, but he turned the lock again. I demanded my release.
“Be patient,” he replied; “I’ll send up your breakfast in a while.”
I thumped on the panels, and rattled the latch angrily; and Catherine asked why I was still shut up? He answered, I must try to endure it another hour, and they went away. I endured it two or three hours; at length, I heard a footstep: not Heathcliff’s.
“I’ve brought you something to eat,” said a voice; “oppen t’ door!”
Complying eagerly, I beheld Hareton, laden with food enough to last me all day.
“Tak’ it,” he added, thrusting the tray into my hand.
“Stay one minute,” I began.
“Nay,” cried he, and retired, regardless of any prayers I could pour forth to detain him.
And there I remained enclosed the whole day, and the whole of the next night; and another, and another. Five nights and four days I remained, altogether, seeing nobody but Hareton once every morning; and he was a model of a jailor: surly, and dumb, and deaf to every attempt at moving his sense of justice or compassion.
CHAPTER XXVIII
On the fifth morning, or rather afternoon, a different step approached—lighter and shorter; and, this time, the person entered the room. It was Zillah; donned in her scarlet shawl, with a black silk bonnet on her head, and a willow-basket swung to her arm.
“Eh, dear! Mrs. Dean!” she exclaimed. “Well! there is a talk about you at Gimmerton. I never thought but you were sunk in the Blackhorse marsh, and missy with you, till master told me you’d been found, and he’d lodged you here! What! and you must have got on an island, sure? And how long were you in the hole? Did master save you, Mrs. Dean? But you’re not so thin—you’ve not been so poorly, have you?”
“Your master is a true scoundrel!” I replied. “But he shall answer for it. He needn’t have raised that tale: it shall all be laid bare!”
“What do you mean?” asked Zillah. “It’s not his tale: they tell that in the village—about your being lost in the marsh; and I calls to Earnshaw, when I come in—‘Eh, they’s queer things, Mr. Hareton, happened since I went off. It’s a sad pity of that likely young lass, and cant Nelly Dean.’ He stared. I thought he had not heard aught, so I told him the rumour. The master listened, and he just smiled to himself, and said, ‘If they have been in the marsh, they are out now, Zillah. Nelly Dean is lodged, at this minute, in your room. You can tell her to flit, when you go up; here is the key. The bog-water got into her head, and she would have run home quite flighty, but I fixed her till she came round to her senses. You can bid her go to the Grange at once, if she be able, and carry a message from me, that her young lady will follow in time to attend the squire’s funeral.’”
“Mr. Edgar is not dead?” I gasped. “Oh! Zillah, Zillah!”
“No, no; sit you down, my good mistress,” she replied; “you’re right sickly yet. He’s not dead; Doctor Kenneth thinks he may last another day. I met him on the road and asked.”
Instead of sitting down, I snatched my outdoor things, and hastened below, for the way was free. On entering the house, I looked about for some one to give information of Catherine. The place was filled with sunshine, and the door stood wide open; but nobody seemed at hand. As I hesitated whether to go off at once, or return and seek my mistress, a slight cough drew my attention to the hearth. Linton lay on the settle, sole tenant, sucking a stick of sugar-candy, and pursuing my movements with apathetic eyes. “Where is Miss Catherine?” I demanded sternly, supposing I could frighten him into giving intelligence, by catching him thus, alone. He sucked on like an innocent.
“Is she gone?” I said.
“No,” he replied; “she’s upstairs: she’s not to go; we won’t let her.”
“You won’t let her, little idiot!” I exclaimed. “Direct me to her room immediately, or I’ll make you sing out sharply.”
“Papa would make you sing out, if you attempted to get there,” he answered. “He says I’m not to be soft with Catherine: she’s my wife, and it’s shameful that she should wish to leave me. He says she hates me and wants me to die, that she may have my money; but she shan’t have it: and she shan’t go home! She never shall!—she may cry, and be sick as much as she pleases!”
He resumed his former occupation, closing his lids, as if he meant to drop asleep.
“Master Heathcliff,” I resumed, “have you forgotten all Catherine’s kindness to you last winter, when you affirmed you loved her, and when she brought you books and sung you songs, and came many a time through wind and snow to see you? She wept to miss one evening, because you would be disappointed; and you felt then that she was a hundred times too good to you: and now you believe the lies your father tells, though you know he detests you both. And you join him against her. That’s fine gratitude, is it not?”
The corner of Linton’s mouth fell, and he took the sugar-candy from his lips.
“Did she come to Wuthering Heights because she hated you?” I continued. “Think for yourself! As to your money, she does not even know that you will have any. And you say she’s sick; and yet you leave her alone, up there in a strange house! You who have felt what it is to be so neglected! You could pity your own sufferings; and she pitied them, too; but you won’t pity hers! I shed tears, Master Heathcliff, you see—an elderly woman, and a servant merely—and you, after pretending such affection, and having reason to worship her almost, store every tear you have for yourself, and lie there quite at ease. Ah! you’re a heartless, selfish boy!”
“I can’t stay with her,” he answered crossly. “I’ll not stay by myself. She cries so I can’t bear it. And she won’t give over, though I say I’ll call my father. I did call him once, and he threatened to strangle her if she was not quiet; but she began again the instant he left the room, moaning and grieving all night long, though I screamed for vexation that I couldn’t sleep.”
“Is Mr. Heathcliff out?” I inquired, perceiving that the wretched creature had no power to sympathise with his cousin’s mental tortures.
“He’s in the court,” he replied, “talking to Doctor Kenneth; who says uncle is dying, truly, at last. I’m glad, for I shall be master of the Grange after him. Catherine always spoke of it as her house. It isn’t hers! It’s mine: papa says everything she has is mine. All her nice books are mine; she offered to give me them, and her pretty birds, and her pony Minny, if I would get the key of our room, and let her out; but I told her she had nothing to give, they were all, all mine. And then she cried, and took a little picture from her neck, and said I should have that; two pictures in a gold case, on one side her mother, and on the other uncle, when they were young. That was yesterday—I said they were mine, too; and tried to get them from her. The spiteful thing wouldn’t let me: she pushed me off, and hurt me. I shrieked out—that frightens her—she heard papa coming, and she broke the hinges and divided the case, and gave me her mother’s portrait; the other she attempted to hide: but papa asked what was the matter, and I explained it. He took the one I had away, and ordered her to resign hers to me; she refused, and he—he struck her down, and wrenched it off the chain, and crushed it with his foot.”
“And were you pleased to see her struck?” I asked: having my designs in encouraging his talk.
“I winked,” he answered: “I wink to see my father strike a dog or a horse, he does it so hard. Yet I was glad at first—she deserved punishing for pushing me: but when papa was gone, she made me come to the window and showed me her cheek cut on the inside, against her teeth, and her mouth filling with blood; and then she gathered up the bits of the picture, and went and sat down with her face to the wall, and she has never spoken to me since: and I sometimes think she can’t speak for pain. I don’t like to think so; but she’s a naughty thing for crying continually; and she looks so pale and wild, I’m afraid of her.”
“And you can get the key if you choose?” I said.
“Yes, when I am upstairs,” he answered; “but I can’t walk upstairs now.”
“In what apartment is it?” I asked.
“Oh,” he cried, “I shan’t tell you where it is. It is our secret. Nobody, neither Hareton nor Zillah, is to know. There! you’ve tired me—go away, go away!” And he turned his face on to his arm, and shut his eyes again.
I considered it best to depart without seeing Mr. Heathcliff, and bring a rescue for my young lady from the Grange. On reaching it, the astonishment of my fellow-servants to see me, and their joy also, was intense; and when they heard that their little mistress was safe, two or three were about to hurry up and shout the news at Mr. Edgar’s door: but I bespoke the announcement of it myself. How changed I found him, even in those few days! He lay an image of sadness and resignation awaiting his death. Very young he looked: though his actual age was thirty-nine, one would have called him ten years younger, at least. He thought of Catherine; for he murmured her name. I touched his hand, and spoke.
“Catherine is coming, dear master!” I whispered; “she is alive and well; and will be here, I hope, to-night.”
I trembled at the first effects of this intelligence: he half rose up, looked eagerly round the apartment, and then sank back in a swoon. As soon as he recovered, I related our compulsory visit, and detention at the Heights. I said Heathcliff forced me to go in: which was not quite true. I uttered as little as possible against Linton; nor did I describe all his father’s brutal conduct—my intentions being to add no bitterness, if I could help it, to his already overflowing cup.
He divined that one of his enemy’s purposes was to secure the personal property, as well as the estate, to his son: or rather himself; yet why he did not wait till his decease was a puzzle to my master, because ignorant how nearly he and his nephew would quit the world together. However, he felt that his will had better be altered: instead of leaving Catherine’s fortune at her own disposal, he determined to put it in the hands of trustees for her use during life, and for her children, if she had any, after her. By that means, it could not fall to Mr. Heathcliff should Linton die.
Having received his orders, I despatched a man to fetch the attorney, and four more, provided with serviceable weapons, to demand my young lady of her jailor. Both parties were delayed very late. The single servant returned first. He said Mr. Green, the lawyer, was out when he arrived at his house, and he had to wait two hours for his re-entrance; and then Mr. Green told him he had a little business in the village that must be done; but he would be at Thrushcross Grange before morning. The four men came back unaccompanied also. They brought word that Catherine was ill: too ill to quit her room; and Heathcliff would not suffer them to see her. I scolded the stupid fellows well for listening to that tale, which I would not carry to my master; resolving to take a whole bevy up to the Heights, at daylight, and storm it literally, unless the prisoner were quietly surrendered to us. Her father shall see her, I vowed, and vowed again, if that devil be killed on his own door-stones in trying to prevent it!
Happily, I was spared the journey and the trouble. I had gone downstairs at three o’clock to fetch a jug of water; and was passing through the hall with it in my hand, when a sharp knock at the front door made me jump. “Oh! it is Green,” I said, recollecting myself—“only Green,” and I went on, intending to send somebody else to open it; but the knock was repeated: not loud, and still importunately. I put the jug on the banister and hastened to admit him myself. The harvest moon shone clear outside. It was not the attorney. My own sweet little mistress sprang on my neck sobbing, “Ellen, Ellen! Is papa alive?”
“Yes,” I cried: “yes, my angel, he is, God be thanked, you are safe with us again!”
She wanted to run, breathless as she was, upstairs to Mr. Linton’s room; but I compelled her to sit down on a chair, and made her drink, and washed her pale face, chafing it into a faint colour with my apron. Then I said I must go first, and tell of her arrival; imploring her to say, she should be happy with young Heathcliff. She stared, but soon comprehending why I counselled her to utter the falsehood, she assured me she would not complain.
I couldn’t abide to be present at their meeting. I stood outside the chamber-door a quarter of an hour, and hardly ventured near the bed, then. All was composed, however: Catherine’s despair was as silent as her father’s joy. She supported him calmly, in appearance; and he fixed on her features his raised eyes that seemed dilating with ecstasy.
He died blissfully, Mr. Lockwood: he died so. Kissing her cheek, he murmured,—“I am going to her; and you, darling child, shall come to us!” and never stirred or spoke again; but continued that rapt, radiant gaze, till his pulse imperceptibly stopped and his soul departed. None could have noticed the exact minute of his death, it was so entirely without a struggle.
Whether Catherine had spent her tears, or whether the grief were too weighty to let them flow, she sat there dry-eyed till the sun rose: she sat till noon, and would still have remained brooding over that deathbed, but I insisted on her coming away and taking some repose. It was well I succeeded in removing her, for at dinner-time appeared the lawyer, having called at Wuthering Heights to get his instructions how to behave. He had sold himself to Mr. Heathcliff: that was the cause of his delay in obeying my master’s summons. Fortunately, no thought of worldly affairs crossed the latter’s mind, to disturb him, after his daughter’s arrival.
Mr. Green took upon himself to order everything and everybody about the place. He gave all the servants but me, notice to quit. He would have carried his delegated authority to the point of insisting that Edgar Linton should not be buried beside his wife, but in the chapel, with his family. There was the will, however, to hinder that, and my loud protestations against any infringement of its directions. The funeral was hurried over; Catherine, Mrs. Linton Heathcliff now, was suffered to stay at the Grange till her father’s corpse had quitted it.
She told me that her anguish had at last spurred Linton to incur the risk of liberating her. She heard the men I sent disputing at the door, and she gathered the sense of Heathcliff’s answer. It drove her desperate. Linton who had been conveyed up to the little parlour soon after I left, was terrified into fetching the key before his father re-ascended. He had the cunning to unlock and re-lock the door, without shutting it; and when he should have gone to bed, he begged to sleep with Hareton, and his petition was granted for once. Catherine stole out before break of day. She dared not try the doors lest the dogs should raise an alarm; she visited the empty chambers and examined their windows; and, luckily, lighting on her mother’s, she got easily out of its lattice, and on to the ground, by means of the fir-tree close by. Her accomplice suffered for his share in the escape, notwithstanding his timid contrivances.
CHAPTER XXIX
The evening after the funeral, my young lady and I were seated in the library; now musing mournfully—one of us despairingly—on our loss, now venturing conjectures as to the gloomy future.
We had just agreed the best destiny which could await Catherine would be a permission to continue resident at the Grange; at least during Linton’s life: he being allowed to join her there, and I to remain as housekeeper. That seemed rather too favourable an arrangement to be hoped for; and yet I did hope, and began to cheer up under the prospect of retaining my home and my employment, and, above all, my beloved young mistress; when a servant—one of the discarded ones, not yet departed—rushed hastily in, and said “that devil Heathcliff” was coming through the court: should he fasten the door in his face?
If we had been mad enough to order that proceeding, we had not time. He made no ceremony of knocking or announcing his name: he was master, and availed himself of the master’s privilege to walk straight in, without saying a word. The sound of our informant’s voice directed him to the library; he entered and motioning him out, shut the door.
It was the same room into which he had been ushered, as a guest, eighteen years before: the same moon shone through the window; and the same autumn landscape lay outside. We had not yet lighted a candle, but all the apartment was visible, even to the portraits on the wall: the splendid head of Mrs. Linton, and the graceful one of her husband. Heathcliff advanced to the hearth. Time had little altered his person either. There was the same man: his dark face rather sallower and more composed, his frame a stone or two heavier, perhaps, and no other difference. Catherine had risen with an impulse to dash out, when she saw him.
“Stop!” he said, arresting her by the arm. “No more runnings away! Where would you go? I’m come to fetch you home; and I hope you’ll be a dutiful daughter and not encourage my son to further disobedience. I was embarrassed how to punish him when I discovered his part in the business: he’s such a cobweb, a pinch would annihilate him; but you’ll see by his look that he has received his due! I brought him down one evening, the day before yesterday, and just set him in a chair, and never touched him afterwards. I sent Hareton out, and we had the room to ourselves. In two hours, I called Joseph to carry him up again; and since then my presence is as potent on his nerves as a ghost; and I fancy he sees me often, though I am not near. Hareton says he wakes and shrieks in the night by the hour together, and calls you to protect him from me; and, whether you like your precious mate, or not, you must come: he’s your concern now; I yield all my interest in him to you.”
“Why not let Catherine continue here,” I pleaded, “and send Master Linton to her? As you hate them both, you’d not miss them: they can only be a daily plague to your unnatural heart.”
“I’m seeking a tenant for the Grange,” he answered; “and I want my children about me, to be sure. Besides, that lass owes me her services for her bread. I’m not going to nurture her in luxury and idleness after Linton is gone. Make haste and get ready, now; and don’t oblige me to compel you.”
“I shall,” said Catherine. “Linton is all I have to love in the world, and though you have done what you could to make him hateful to me, and me to him, you cannot make us hate each other. And I defy you to hurt him when I am by, and I defy you to frighten me!”
“You are a boastful champion,” replied Heathcliff; “but I don’t like you well enough to hurt him: you shall get the full benefit of the torment, as long as it lasts. It is not I who will make him hateful to you—it is his own sweet spirit. He’s as bitter as gall at your desertion and its consequences: don’t expect thanks for this noble devotion. I heard him draw a pleasant picture to Zillah of what he would do if he were as strong as I: the inclination is there, and his very weakness will sharpen his wits to find a substitute for strength.”
“I know he has a bad nature,” said Catherine: “he’s your son. But I’m glad I’ve a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me, and for that reason I love him. Mr. Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery. You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you—nobody will cry for you when you die! I wouldn’t be you!”
Catherine spoke with a kind of dreary triumph: she seemed to have made up her mind to enter into the spirit of her future family, and draw pleasure from the griefs of her enemies.
“You shall be sorry to be yourself presently,” said her father-in-law, “if you stand there another minute. Begone, witch, and get your things!”
She scornfully withdrew. In her absence I began to beg for Zillah’s place at the Heights, offering to resign mine to her; but he would suffer it on no account. He bid me be silent; and then, for the first time, allowed himself a glance round the room and a look at the pictures. Having studied Mrs. Linton’s, he said—“I shall have that home. Not because I need it, but—” He turned abruptly to the fire, and continued, with what, for lack of a better word, I must call a smile—“I’ll tell you what I did yesterday! I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there: when I saw her face again—it is hers yet!—he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change if the air blew on it, and so I struck one side of the coffin loose, and covered it up: not Linton’s side, damn him! I wish he’d been soldered in lead. And I bribed the sexton to pull it away when I’m laid there, and slide mine out too; I’ll have it made so: and then by the time Linton gets to us he’ll not know which is which!”
“You were very wicked, Mr. Heathcliff!” I exclaimed; “were you not ashamed to disturb the dead?”
“I disturbed nobody, Nelly,” he replied; “and I gave some ease to myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you’ll have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years—incessantly—remorselessly—till yesternight; and yesternight I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.”
“And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then?” I said.
“Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still!” he answered. “Do you suppose I dread any change of that sort? I expected such a transformation on raising the lid, but I’m better pleased that it should not commence till I share it. Besides, unless I had received a distinct impression of her passionless features, that strange feeling would hardly have been removed. It began oddly. You know I was wild after she died; and eternally, from dawn to dawn, praying her to return to me her spirit! I have a strong faith in ghosts: I have a conviction that they can, and do, exist among us! The day she was buried, there came a fall of snow. In the evening I went to the churchyard. It blew bleak as winter—all round was solitary. I didn’t fear that her fool of a husband would wander up the glen so late; and no one else had business to bring them there. Being alone, and conscious two yards of loose earth was the sole barrier between us, I said to myself—‘I’ll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I’ll think it is this north wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep.’ I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my might—it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the screws; I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave, and bending down. ‘If I can only get this off,’ I muttered, ‘I wish they may shovel in the earth over us both!’ and I wrenched at it more desperately still. There was another sigh, close at my ear. I appeared to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleet-laden wind. I knew no living thing in flesh and blood was by; but, as certainly as you perceive the approach to some substantial body in the dark, though it cannot be discerned, so certainly I felt that Cathy was there: not under me, but on the earth. A sudden sense of relief flowed from my heart through every limb. I relinquished my labour of agony, and turned consoled at once: unspeakably consoled. Her presence was with me: it remained while I re-filled the grave, and led me home. You may laugh, if you will; but I was sure I should see her there. I was sure she was with me, and I could not help talking to her. Having reached the Heights, I rushed eagerly to the door. It was fastened; and, I remember, that accursed Earnshaw and my wife opposed my entrance. I remember stopping to kick the breath out of him, and then hurrying upstairs, to my room and hers. I looked round impatiently—I felt her by me—I could almost see her, and yet I could not! I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning—from the fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then, sometimes more and sometimes less, I’ve been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal! keeping my nerves at such a stretch that, if they had not resembled catgut, they would long ago have relaxed to the feebleness of Linton’s. When I sat in the house with Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I walked on the moors I should meet her coming in. When I went from home I hastened to return; she must be somewhere at the Heights, I was certain! And when I slept in her chamber—I was beaten out of that. I couldn’t lie there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she was either outside the window, or sliding back the panels, or entering the room, or even resting her darling head on the same pillow as she did when a child; and I must open my lids to see. And so I opened and closed them a hundred times a night—to be always disappointed! It racked me! I’ve often groaned aloud, till that old rascal Joseph no doubt believed that my conscience was playing the fiend inside of me. Now, since I’ve seen her, I’m pacified—a little. It was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen years!”
Mr. Heathcliff paused and wiped his forehead; his hair clung to it, wet with perspiration; his eyes were fixed on the red embers of the fire, the brows not contracted, but raised next the temples; diminishing the grim aspect of his countenance, but imparting a peculiar look of trouble, and a painful appearance of mental tension towards one absorbing subject. He only half addressed me, and I maintained silence. I didn’t like to hear him talk! After a short period he resumed his meditation on the picture, took it down and leant it against the sofa to contemplate it at better advantage; and while so occupied Catherine entered, announcing that she was ready, when her pony should be saddled.
“Send that over to-morrow,” said Heathcliff to me; then turning to her, he added: “You may do without your pony: it is a fine evening, and you’ll need no ponies at Wuthering Heights; for what journeys you take, your own feet will serve you. Come along.”
“Good-bye, Ellen!” whispered my dear little mistress. As she kissed me, her lips felt like ice. “Come and see me, Ellen; don’t forget.”
“Take care you do no such thing, Mrs. Dean!” said her new father. “When I wish to speak to you I’ll come here. I want none of your prying at my house!”
He signed her to precede him; and casting back a look that cut my heart, she obeyed. I watched them, from the window, walk down the garden. Heathcliff fixed Catherine’s arm under his: though she disputed the act at first evidently; and with rapid strides he hurried her into the alley, whose trees concealed them.
CHAPTER XXX
I have paid a visit to the Heights, but I have not seen her since she left: Joseph held the door in his hand when I called to ask after her, and wouldn’t let me pass. He said Mrs. Linton was “thrang,” and the master was not in. Zillah has told me something of the way they go on, otherwise I should hardly know who was dead and who living. She thinks Catherine haughty, and does not like her, I can guess by her talk. My young lady asked some aid of her when she first came; but Mr. Heathcliff told her to follow her own business, and let his daughter-in-law look after herself; and Zillah willingly acquiesced, being a narrow-minded, selfish woman. Catherine evinced a child’s annoyance at this neglect; repaid it with contempt, and thus enlisted my informant among her enemies, as securely as if she had done her some great wrong. I had a long talk with Zillah about six weeks ago, a little before you came, one day when we foregathered on the moor; and this is what she told me.
“The first thing Mrs. Linton did,” she said, “on her arrival at the Heights, was to run upstairs, without even wishing good-evening to me and Joseph; she shut herself into Linton’s room, and remained till morning. Then, while the master and Earnshaw were at breakfast, she entered the house, and asked all in a quiver if the doctor might be sent for? her cousin was very ill.
“‘We know that!’ answered Heathcliff; ‘but his life is not worth a farthing, and I won’t spend a farthing on him.’
“‘But I cannot tell how to do,’ she said; ‘and if nobody will help me, he’ll die!’
“‘Walk out of the room,’ cried the master, ‘and let me never hear a word more about him! None here care what becomes of him; if you do, act the nurse; if you do not, lock him up and leave him.’
“Then she began to bother me, and I said I’d had enough plague with the tiresome thing; we each had our tasks, and hers was to wait on Linton: Mr. Heathcliff bid me leave that labour to her.
“How they managed together, I can’t tell. I fancy he fretted a great deal, and moaned hisseln night and day; and she had precious little rest: one could guess by her white face and heavy eyes. She sometimes came into the kitchen all wildered like, and looked as if she would fain beg assistance; but I was not going to disobey the master: I never dare disobey him, Mrs. Dean; and, though I thought it wrong that Kenneth should not be sent for, it was no concern of mine either to advise or complain, and I always refused to meddle. Once or twice, after we had gone to bed, I’ve happened to open my door again and seen her sitting crying on the stairs’-top; and then I’ve shut myself in quick, for fear of being moved to interfere. I did pity her then, I’m sure: still I didn’t wish to lose my place, you know.
“At last, one night she came boldly into my chamber, and frightened me out of my wits, by saying, ‘Tell Mr. Heathcliff that his son is dying—I’m sure he is, this time. Get up, instantly, and tell him.’
“Having uttered this speech, she vanished again. I lay a quarter of an hour listening and trembling. Nothing stirred—the house was quiet.
“She’s mistaken, I said to myself. He’s got over it. I needn’t disturb them; and I began to doze. But my sleep was marred a second time by a sharp ringing of the bell—the only bell we have, put up on purpose for Linton; and the master called to me to see what was the matter, and inform them that he wouldn’t have that noise repeated.
“I delivered Catherine’s message. He cursed to himself, and in a few minutes came out with a lighted candle, and proceeded to their room. I followed. Mrs. Heathcliff was seated by the bedside, with her hands folded on her knees. Her father-in-law went up, held the light to Linton’s face, looked at him, and touched him; afterwards he turned to her.
“‘Now—Catherine,’ he said, ‘how do you feel?’
“She was dumb.
“‘How do you feel, Catherine?’ he repeated.
“‘He’s safe, and I’m free,’ she answered: ‘I should feel well—but,’ she continued, with a bitterness she couldn’t conceal, ‘you have left me so long to struggle against death alone, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death!’
“And she looked like it, too! I gave her a little wine. Hareton and Joseph, who had been wakened by the ringing and the sound of feet, and heard our talk from outside, now entered. Joseph was fain, I believe, of the lad’s removal; Hareton seemed a thought bothered: though he was more taken up with staring at Catherine than thinking of Linton. But the master bid him get off to bed again: we didn’t want his help. He afterwards made Joseph remove the body to his chamber, and told me to return to mine, and Mrs. Heathcliff remained by herself.
“In the morning, he sent me to tell her she must come down to breakfast: she had undressed, and appeared going to sleep, and said she was ill; at which I hardly wondered. I informed Mr. Heathcliff, and he replied,—‘Well, let her be till after the funeral; and go up now and then to get her what is needful; and, as soon as she seems better, tell me.’”
Cathy stayed upstairs a fortnight, according to Zillah; who visited her twice a day, and would have been rather more friendly, but her attempts at increasing kindness were proudly and promptly repelled.
Heathcliff went up once, to show her Linton’s will. He had bequeathed the whole of his, and what had been her, moveable property, to his father: the poor creature was threatened, or coaxed, into that act during her week’s absence, when his uncle died. The lands, being a minor, he could not meddle with. However, Mr. Heathcliff has claimed and kept them in his wife’s right and his also: I suppose legally; at any rate, Catherine, destitute of cash and friends, cannot disturb his possession.
“Nobody,” said Zillah, “ever approached her door, except that once, but I; and nobody asked anything about her. The first occasion of her coming down into the house was on a Sunday afternoon. She had cried out, when I carried up her dinner, that she couldn’t bear any longer being in the cold; and I told her the master was going to Thrushcross Grange, and Earnshaw and I needn’t hinder her from descending; so, as soon as she heard Heathcliff’s horse trot off, she made her appearance, donned in black, and her yellow curls combed back behind her ears as plain as a Quaker: she couldn’t comb them out.
“Joseph and I generally go to chapel on Sundays:” the kirk, (you know, has no minister now, explained Mrs. Dean; and they call the Methodists’ or Baptists’ place, I can’t say which it is, at Gimmerton, a chapel.) “Joseph had gone,” she continued, “but I thought proper to bide at home. Young folks are always the better for an elder’s over-looking; and Hareton, with all his bashfulness, isn’t a model of nice behaviour. I let him know that his cousin would very likely sit with us, and she had been always used to see the Sabbath respected; so he had as good leave his guns and bits of indoor work alone, while she stayed. He coloured up at the news, and cast his eyes over his hands and clothes. The train-oil and gunpowder were shoved out of sight in a minute. I saw he meant to give her his company; and I guessed, by his way, he wanted to be presentable; so, laughing, as I durst not laugh when the master is by, I offered to help him, if he would, and joked at his confusion. He grew sullen, and began to swear.
“Now, Mrs. Dean,” Zillah went on, seeing me not pleased by her manner, “you happen think your young lady too fine for Mr. Hareton; and happen you’re right: but I own I should love well to bring her pride a peg lower. And what will all her learning and her daintiness do for her, now? She’s as poor as you or I: poorer, I’ll be bound: you’re saving, and I’m doing my little all that road.”
Hareton allowed Zillah to give him her aid; and she flattered him into a good humour; so, when Catherine came, half forgetting her former insults, he tried to make himself agreeable, by the housekeeper’s account.
“Missis walked in,” she said, “as chill as an icicle, and as high as a princess. I got up and offered her my seat in the arm-chair. No, she turned up her nose at my civility. Earnshaw rose, too, and bid her come to the settle, and sit close by the fire: he was sure she was starved.
“‘I’ve been starved a month and more,’ she answered, resting on the word as scornful as she could.
“And she got a chair for herself, and placed it at a distance from both of us. Having sat till she was warm, she began to look round, and discovered a number of books on the dresser; she was instantly upon her feet again, stretching to reach them: but they were too high up. Her cousin, after watching her endeavours a while, at last summoned courage to help her; she held her frock, and he filled it with the first that came to hand.
“That was a great advance for the lad. She didn’t thank him; still, he felt gratified that she had accepted his assistance, and ventured to stand behind as she examined them, and even to stoop and point out what struck his fancy in certain old pictures which they contained; nor was he daunted by the saucy style in which she jerked the page from his finger: he contented himself with going a bit farther back and looking at her instead of the book. She continued reading, or seeking for something to read. His attention became, by degrees, quite centred in the study of her thick silky curls: her face he couldn’t see, and she couldn’t see him. And, perhaps, not quite awake to what he did, but attracted like a child to a candle, at last he proceeded from staring to touching; he put out his hand and stroked one curl, as gently as if it were a bird. He might have stuck a knife into her neck, she started round in such a taking.
“‘Get away this moment! How dare you touch me? Why are you stopping there?’ she cried, in a tone of disgust. ‘I can’t endure you! I’ll go upstairs again, if you come near me.’
“Mr. Hareton recoiled, looking as foolish as he could do: he sat down in the settle very quiet, and she continued turning over her volumes another half hour; finally, Earnshaw crossed over, and whispered to me.
“‘Will you ask her to read to us, Zillah? I’m stalled of doing naught; and I do like—I could like to hear her! Dunnot say I wanted it, but ask of yourseln.’
“‘Mr. Hareton wishes you would read to us, ma’am,’ I said, immediately. ‘He’d take it very kind—he’d be much obliged.’
“She frowned; and looking up, answered—
“‘Mr. Hareton, and the whole set of you, will be good enough to understand that I reject any pretence at kindness you have the hypocrisy to offer! I despise you, and will have nothing to say to any of you! When I would have given my life for one kind word, even to see one of your faces, you all kept off. But I won’t complain to you! I’m driven down here by the cold; not either to amuse you or enjoy your society.’
“‘What could I ha’ done?’ began Earnshaw. ‘How was I to blame?’
“‘Oh! you are an exception,’ answered Mrs. Heathcliff. ‘I never missed such a concern as you.’
“‘But I offered more than once, and asked,’ he said, kindling up at her pertness, ‘I asked Mr. Heathcliff to let me wake for you—’
“‘Be silent! I’ll go out of doors, or anywhere, rather than have your disagreeable voice in my ear!’ said my lady.
“Hareton muttered she might go to hell, for him! and unslinging his gun, restrained himself from his Sunday occupations no longer. He talked now, freely enough; and she presently saw fit to retreat to her solitude: but the frost had set in, and, in spite of her pride, she was forced to condescend to our company, more and more. However, I took care there should be no further scorning at my good nature: ever since, I’ve been as stiff as herself; and she has no lover or liker among us: and she does not deserve one; for, let them say the least word to her, and she’ll curl back without respect of any one. She’ll snap at the master himself, and as good as dares him to thrash her; and the more hurt she gets, the more venomous she grows.”
At first, on hearing this account from Zillah, I determined to leave my situation, take a cottage, and get Catherine to come and live with me: but Mr. Heathcliff would as soon permit that as he would set up Hareton in an independent house; and I can see no remedy, at present, unless she could marry again; and that scheme it does not come within my province to arrange.
* * * * *
Thus ended Mrs. Dean’s story. Notwithstanding the doctor’s prophecy, I am rapidly recovering strength; and though it be only the second week in January, I propose getting out on horseback in a day or two, and riding over to Wuthering Heights, to inform my landlord that I shall spend the next six months in London; and, if he likes, he may look out for another tenant to take the place after October. I would not pass another winter here for much.
CHAPTER XXXI
Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty. I went to the Heights as I proposed: my housekeeper entreated me to bear a little note from her to her young lady, and I did not refuse, for the worthy woman was not conscious of anything odd in her request. The front door stood open, but the jealous gate was fastened, as at my last visit; I knocked and invoked Earnshaw from among the garden-beds; he unchained it, and I entered. The fellow is as handsome a rustic as need be seen. I took particular notice of him this time; but then he does his best apparently to make the least of his advantages.
I asked if Mr. Heathcliff were at home? He answered, No; but he would be in at dinner-time. It was eleven o’clock, and I announced my intention of going in and waiting for him; at which he immediately flung down his tools and accompanied me, in the office of watchdog, not as a substitute for the host.
We entered together; Catherine was there, making herself useful in preparing some vegetables for the approaching meal; she looked more sulky and less spirited than when I had seen her first. She hardly raised her eyes to notice me, and continued her employment with the same disregard to common forms of politeness as before; never returning my bow and good-morning by the slightest acknowledgment.
“She does not seem so amiable,” I thought, “as Mrs. Dean would persuade me to believe. She’s a beauty, it is true; but not an angel.”
Earnshaw surlily bid her remove her things to the kitchen. “Remove them yourself,” she said, pushing them from her as soon as she had done; and retiring to a stool by the window, where she began to carve figures of birds and beasts out of the turnip-parings in her lap. I approached her, pretending to desire a view of the garden; and, as I fancied, adroitly dropped Mrs. Dean’s note on to her knee, unnoticed by Hareton—but she asked aloud, “What is that?” And chucked it off.
“A letter from your old acquaintance, the housekeeper at the Grange,” I answered; annoyed at her exposing my kind deed, and fearful lest it should be imagined a missive of my own. She would gladly have gathered it up at this information, but Hareton beat her; he seized and put it in his waistcoat, saying Mr. Heathcliff should look at it first. Thereat, Catherine silently turned her face from us, and, very stealthily, drew out her pocket-handkerchief and applied it to her eyes; and her cousin, after struggling awhile to keep down his softer feelings, pulled out the letter and flung it on the floor beside her, as ungraciously as he could. Catherine caught and perused it eagerly; then she put a few questions to me concerning the inmates, rational and irrational, of her former home; and gazing towards the hills, murmured in soliloquy:
“I should like to be riding Minny down there! I should like to be climbing up there! Oh! I’m tired—I’m stalled, Hareton!” And she leant her pretty head back against the sill, with half a yawn and half a sigh, and lapsed into an aspect of abstracted sadness: neither caring nor knowing whether we remarked her.
“Mrs. Heathcliff,” I said, after sitting some time mute, “you are not aware that I am an acquaintance of yours? so intimate that I think it strange you won’t come and speak to me. My housekeeper never wearies of talking about and praising you; and she’ll be greatly disappointed if I return with no news of or from you, except that you received her letter and said nothing!”
She appeared to wonder at this speech, and asked,—
“Does Ellen like you?”
“Yes, very well,” I replied, hesitatingly.
“You must tell her,” she continued, “that I would answer her letter, but I have no materials for writing: not even a book from which I might tear a leaf.”
“No books!” I exclaimed. “How do you contrive to live here without them? if I may take the liberty to inquire. Though provided with a large library, I’m frequently very dull at the Grange; take my books away, and I should be desperate!”
“I was always reading, when I had them,” said Catherine; “and Mr. Heathcliff never reads; so he took it into his head to destroy my books. I have not had a glimpse of one for weeks. Only once, I searched through Joseph’s store of theology, to his great irritation; and once, Hareton, I came upon a secret stock in your room—some Latin and Greek, and some tales and poetry: all old friends. I brought the last here—and you gathered them, as a magpie gathers silver spoons, for the mere love of stealing! They are of no use to you; or else you concealed them in the bad spirit that, as you cannot enjoy them, nobody else shall. Perhaps your envy counselled Mr. Heathcliff to rob me of my treasures? But I’ve most of them written on my brain and printed in my heart, and you cannot deprive me of those!”
Earnshaw blushed crimson when his cousin made this revelation of his private literary accumulations, and stammered an indignant denial of her accusations.
“Mr. Hareton is desirous of increasing his amount of knowledge,” I said, coming to his rescue. “He is not envious, but emulous of your attainments. He’ll be a clever scholar in a few years.”
“And he wants me to sink into a dunce, meantime,” answered Catherine. “Yes, I hear him trying to spell and read to himself, and pretty blunders he makes! I wish you would repeat Chevy Chase as you did yesterday: it was extremely funny. I heard you; and I heard you turning over the dictionary to seek out the hard words, and then cursing because you couldn’t read their explanations!”
The young man evidently thought it too bad that he should be laughed at for his ignorance, and then laughed at for trying to remove it. I had a similar notion; and, remembering Mrs. Dean’s anecdote of his first attempt at enlightening the darkness in which he had been reared, I observed,—“But, Mrs. Heathcliff, we have each had a commencement, and each stumbled and tottered on the threshold; had our teachers scorned instead of aiding us, we should stumble and totter yet.”
“Oh!” she replied, “I don’t wish to limit his acquirements: still, he has no right to appropriate what is mine, and make it ridiculous to me with his vile mistakes and mispronunciations! Those books, both prose and verse, are consecrated to me by other associations; and I hate to have them debased and profaned in his mouth! Besides, of all, he has selected my favourite pieces that I love the most to repeat, as if out of deliberate malice.”
Hareton’s chest heaved in silence a minute: he laboured under a severe sense of mortification and wrath, which it was no easy task to suppress. I rose, and, from a gentlemanly idea of relieving his embarrassment, took up my station in the doorway, surveying the external prospect as I stood. He followed my example, and left the room; but presently reappeared, bearing half a dozen volumes in his hands, which he threw into Catherine’s lap, exclaiming,—“Take them! I never want to hear, or read, or think of them again!”
“I won’t have them now,” she answered. “I shall connect them with you, and hate them.”
She opened one that had obviously been often turned over, and read a portion in the drawling tone of a beginner; then laughed, and threw it from her. “And listen,” she continued, provokingly, commencing a verse of an old ballad in the same fashion.
But his self-love would endure no further torment: I heard, and not altogether disapprovingly, a manual check given to her saucy tongue. The little wretch had done her utmost to hurt her cousin’s sensitive though uncultivated feelings, and a physical argument was the only mode he had of balancing the account, and repaying its effects on the inflictor. He afterwards gathered the books and hurled them on the fire. I read in his countenance what anguish it was to offer that sacrifice to spleen. I fancied that as they consumed, he recalled the pleasure they had already imparted, and the triumph and ever-increasing pleasure he had anticipated from them; and I fancied I guessed the incitement to his secret studies also. He had been content with daily labour and rough animal enjoyments, till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompters to higher pursuits; and instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavours to raise himself had produced just the contrary result.
“Yes, that’s all the good that such a brute as you can get from them!” cried Catherine, sucking her damaged lip, and watching the conflagration with indignant eyes.
“You’d better hold your tongue, now,” he answered fiercely.
And his agitation precluded further speech; he advanced hastily to the entrance, where I made way for him to pass. But ere he had crossed the door-stones, Mr. Heathcliff, coming up the causeway, encountered him, and laying hold of his shoulder asked,—“What’s to do now, my lad?”
“Naught, naught,” he said, and broke away to enjoy his grief and anger in solitude.
Heathcliff gazed after him, and sighed.
“It will be odd if I thwart myself,” he muttered, unconscious that I was behind him. “But when I look for his father in his face, I find her every day more! How the devil is he so like? I can hardly bear to see him.”
He bent his eyes to the ground, and walked moodily in. There was a restless, anxious expression in his countenance, I had never remarked there before; and he looked sparer in person. His daughter-in-law, on perceiving him through the window, immediately escaped to the kitchen, so that I remained alone.
“I’m glad to see you out of doors again, Mr. Lockwood,” he said, in reply to my greeting; “from selfish motives partly: I don’t think I could readily supply your loss in this desolation. I’ve wondered more than once what brought you here.”
“An idle whim, I fear, sir,” was my answer; “or else an idle whim is going to spirit me away. I shall set out for London next week; and I must give you warning that I feel no disposition to retain Thrushcross Grange beyond the twelve months I agreed to rent it. I believe I shall not live there any more.”
“Oh, indeed; you’re tired of being banished from the world, are you?” he said. “But if you be coming to plead off paying for a place you won’t occupy, your journey is useless: I never relent in exacting my due from any one.”
“I’m coming to plead off nothing about it,” I exclaimed, considerably irritated. “Should you wish it, I’ll settle with you now,” and I drew my note-book from my pocket.
“No, no,” he replied, coolly; “you’ll leave sufficient behind to cover your debts, if you fail to return: I’m not in such a hurry. Sit down and take your dinner with us; a guest that is safe from repeating his visit can generally be made welcome. Catherine! bring the things in: where are you?”
Catherine reappeared, bearing a tray of knives and forks.
“You may get your dinner with Joseph,” muttered Heathcliff, aside, “and remain in the kitchen till he is gone.”
She obeyed his directions very punctually: perhaps she had no temptation to transgress. Living among clowns and misanthropists, she probably cannot appreciate a better class of people when she meets them.
With Mr. Heathcliff, grim and saturnine, on the one hand, and Hareton, absolutely dumb, on the other, I made a somewhat cheerless meal, and bade adieu early. I would have departed by the back way, to get a last glimpse of Catherine and annoy old Joseph; but Hareton received orders to lead up my horse, and my host himself escorted me to the door, so I could not fulfil my wish.
“How dreary life gets over in that house!” I reflected, while riding down the road. “What a realisation of something more romantic than a fairy tale it would have been for Mrs. Linton Heathcliff, had she and I struck up an attachment, as her good nurse desired, and migrated together into the stirring atmosphere of the town!”
CHAPTER XXXII
1802.—This September I was invited to devastate the moors of a friend in the north, and on my journey to his abode, I unexpectedly came within fifteen miles of Gimmerton. The ostler at a roadside public-house was holding a pail of water to refresh my horses, when a cart of very green oats, newly reaped, passed by, and he remarked,—“Yon’s frough Gimmerton, nah! They’re allas three wick’ after other folk wi’ ther harvest.”
“Gimmerton?” I repeated—my residence in that locality had already grown dim and dreamy. “Ah! I know. How far is it from this?”
“Happen fourteen mile o’er th’ hills; and a rough road,” he answered.
A sudden impulse seized me to visit Thrushcross Grange. It was scarcely noon, and I conceived that I might as well pass the night under my own roof as in an inn. Besides, I could spare a day easily to arrange matters with my landlord, and thus save myself the trouble of invading the neighbourhood again. Having rested awhile, I directed my servant to inquire the way to the village; and, with great fatigue to our beasts, we managed the distance in some three hours.
I left him there, and proceeded down the valley alone. The grey church looked greyer, and the lonely churchyard lonelier. I distinguished a moor-sheep cropping the short turf on the graves. It was sweet, warm weather—too warm for travelling; but the heat did not hinder me from enjoying the delightful scenery above and below: had I seen it nearer August, I’m sure it would have tempted me to waste a month among its solitudes. In winter nothing more dreary, in summer nothing more divine, than those glens shut in by hills, and those bluff, bold swells of heath.
I reached the Grange before sunset, and knocked for admittance; but the family had retreated into the back premises, I judged, by one thin, blue wreath, curling from the kitchen chimney, and they did not hear. I rode into the court. Under the porch, a girl of nine or ten sat knitting, and an old woman reclined on the housesteps, smoking a meditative pipe.
“Is Mrs. Dean within?” I demanded of the dame.
“Mistress Dean? Nay!” she answered, “she doesn’t bide here: shoo’s up at th’ Heights.”
“Are you the housekeeper, then?” I continued.
“Eea, Aw keep th’ hause,” she replied.
“Well, I’m Mr. Lockwood, the master. Are there any rooms to lodge me in, I wonder? I wish to stay all night.”
“T’ maister!” she cried in astonishment. “Whet, whoiver knew yah wur coming? Yah sud ha’ send word. They’s nowt norther dry nor mensful abaht t’ place: nowt there isn’t!”
She threw down her pipe and bustled in, the girl followed, and I entered too; soon perceiving that her report was true, and, moreover, that I had almost upset her wits by my unwelcome apparition, I bade her be composed. I would go out for a walk; and, meantime she must try to prepare a corner of a sitting-room for me to sup in, and a bedroom to sleep in. No sweeping and dusting, only good fire and dry sheets were necessary. She seemed willing to do her best; though she thrust the hearth-brush into the grates in mistake for the poker, and malappropriated several other articles of her craft: but I retired, confiding in her energy for a resting-place against my return. Wuthering Heights was the goal of my proposed excursion. An after-thought brought me back, when I had quitted the court.
“All well at the Heights?” I inquired of the woman.
“Eea, f’r owt ee knaw!” she answered, skurrying away with a pan of hot cinders.
I would have asked why Mrs. Dean had deserted the Grange, but it was impossible to delay her at such a crisis, so I turned away and made my exit, rambling leisurely along, with the glow of a sinking sun behind, and the mild glory of a rising moon in front—one fading, and the other brightening—as I quitted the park, and climbed the stony by-road branching off to Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling. Before I arrived in sight of it, all that remained of day was a beamless amber light along the west: but I could see every pebble on the path, and every blade of grass, by that splendid moon. I had neither to climb the gate nor to knock—it yielded to my hand. That is an improvement, I thought. And I noticed another, by the aid of my nostrils; a fragrance of stocks and wallflowers wafted on the air from amongst the homely fruit-trees.
Both doors and lattices were open; and yet, as is usually the case in a coal-district, a fine red fire illumined the chimney: the comfort which the eye derives from it renders the extra heat endurable. But the house of Wuthering Heights is so large that the inmates have plenty of space for withdrawing out of its influence; and accordingly what inmates there were had stationed themselves not far from one of the windows. I could both see them and hear them talk before I entered, and looked and listened in consequence; being moved thereto by a mingled sense of curiosity and envy, that grew as I lingered.
“Con-trary!” said a voice as sweet as a silver bell. “That for the third time, you dunce! I’m not going to tell you again. Recollect, or I’ll pull your hair!”
“Contrary, then,” answered another, in deep but softened tones. “And now, kiss me, for minding so well.”
“No, read it over first correctly, without a single mistake.”
The male speaker began to read: he was a young man, respectably dressed and seated at a table, having a book before him. His handsome features glowed with pleasure, and his eyes kept impatiently wandering from the page to a small white hand over his shoulder, which recalled him by a smart slap on the cheek, whenever its owner detected such signs of inattention. Its owner stood behind; her light, shining ringlets blending, at intervals, with his brown locks, as she bent to superintend his studies; and her face—it was lucky he could not see her face, or he would never have been so steady. I could; and I bit my lip in spite, at having thrown away the chance I might have had of doing something besides staring at its smiting beauty.
The task was done, not free from further blunders; but the pupil claimed a reward, and received at least five kisses; which, however, he generously returned. Then they came to the door, and from their conversation I judged they were about to issue out and have a walk on the moors. I supposed I should be condemned in Hareton Earnshaw’s heart, if not by his mouth, to the lowest pit in the infernal regions if I showed my unfortunate person in his neighbourhood then; and feeling very mean and malignant, I skulked round to seek refuge in the kitchen. There was unobstructed admittance on that side also; and at the door sat my old friend Nelly Dean, sewing and singing a song; which was often interrupted from within by harsh words of scorn and intolerance, uttered in far from musical accents.
“I’d rayther, by th’ haulf, hev’ ’em swearing i’ my lugs fro’h morn to neeght, nor hearken ye hahsiver!” said the tenant of the kitchen, in answer to an unheard speech of Nelly’s. “It’s a blazing shame, that I cannot oppen t’ blessed Book, but yah set up them glories to sattan, and all t’ flaysome wickednesses that iver were born into th’ warld! Oh! ye’re a raight nowt; and shoo’s another; and that poor lad ’ll be lost atween ye. Poor lad!” he added, with a groan; “he’s witched: I’m sartin on’t. Oh, Lord, judge ’em, for there’s norther law nor justice among wer rullers!”
“No! or we should be sitting in flaming fagots, I suppose,” retorted the singer. “But wisht, old man, and read your Bible like a Christian, and never mind me. This is ‘Fairy Annie’s Wedding’—a bonny tune—it goes to a dance.”
Mrs. Dean was about to recommence, when I advanced; and recognising me directly, she jumped to her feet, crying—“Why, bless you, Mr. Lockwood! How could you think of returning in this way? All’s shut up at Thrushcross Grange. You should have given us notice!”
“I’ve arranged to be accommodated there, for as long as I shall stay,” I answered. “I depart again to-morrow. And how are you transplanted here, Mrs. Dean? tell me that.”
“Zillah left, and Mr. Heathcliff wished me to come, soon after you went to London, and stay till you returned. But, step in, pray! Have you walked from Gimmerton this evening?”
“From the Grange,” I replied; “and while they make me lodging room there, I want to finish my business with your master; because I don’t think of having another opportunity in a hurry.”
“What business, sir?” said Nelly, conducting me into the house. “He’s gone out at present, and won’t return soon.”
“About the rent,” I answered.
“Oh! then it is with Mrs. Heathcliff you must settle,” she observed; “or rather with me. She has not learnt to manage her affairs yet, and I act for her: there’s nobody else.”
I looked surprised.
“Ah! you have not heard of Heathcliff’s death, I see,” she continued.
“Heathcliff dead!” I exclaimed, astonished. “How long ago?”
“Three months since: but sit down, and let me take your hat, and I’ll tell you all about it. Stop, you have had nothing to eat, have you?”
“I want nothing: I have ordered supper at home. You sit down too. I never dreamt of his dying! Let me hear how it came to pass. You say you don’t expect them back for some time—the young people?”
“No—I have to scold them every evening for their late rambles: but they don’t care for me. At least, have a drink of our old ale; it will do you good: you seem weary.”
She hastened to fetch it before I could refuse, and I heard Joseph asking whether “it warn’t a crying scandal that she should have followers at her time of life? And then, to get them jocks out o’ t’ maister’s cellar! He fair shaamed to ’bide still and see it.”
She did not stay to retaliate, but re-entered in a minute, bearing a reaming silver pint, whose contents I lauded with becoming earnestness. And afterwards she furnished me with the sequel of Heathcliff’s history. He had a “queer” end, as she expressed it.
* * * * *
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. Mr. Heathcliff did not explain his reasons for taking a new mind about my coming here; he only told me he wanted me, and he was tired of seeing Catherine: I must make the little parlour my sitting-room, and keep her with me. It was enough if he were obliged to see her once or twice a day. She seemed pleased at this arrangement; and, by degrees, I smuggled over a great number of books, and other articles, that had formed her amusement at the Grange; and flattered myself we should get on in tolerable comfort. The delusion did not last long. Catherine, contented at first, in a brief space grew irritable and restless. For one thing, she was forbidden to move out of the garden, and it fretted her sadly to be confined to its narrow bounds as spring drew on; for another, in following the house, I was forced to quit her frequently, and she complained of loneliness: she preferred quarrelling with Joseph in the kitchen to sitting at peace in her solitude. I did not mind their skirmishes: but Hareton was often obliged to seek the kitchen also, when the master wanted to have the house to himself; and though in the beginning she either left it at his approach, or quietly joined in my occupations, and shunned remarking or addressing him—and though he was always as sullen and silent as possible—after a while, she changed her behaviour, and became incapable of letting him alone: talking at him; commenting on his stupidity and idleness; expressing her wonder how he could endure the life he lived—how he could sit a whole evening staring into the fire, and dozing.
“He’s just like a dog, is he not, Ellen?” she once observed, “or a cart-horse? He does his work, eats his food, and sleeps eternally! What a blank, dreary mind he must have! Do you ever dream, Hareton? And, if you do, what is it about? But you can’t speak to me!”
Then she looked at him; but he would neither open his mouth nor look again.
“He’s, perhaps, dreaming now,” she continued. “He twitched his shoulder as Juno twitches hers. Ask him, Ellen.”
“Mr. Hareton will ask the master to send you upstairs, if you don’t behave!” I said. He had not only twitched his shoulder but clenched his fist, as if tempted to use it.
“I know why Hareton never speaks, when I am in the kitchen,” she exclaimed, on another occasion. “He is afraid I shall laugh at him. Ellen, what do you think? He began to teach himself to read once; and, because I laughed, he burned his books, and dropped it: was he not a fool?”
“Were not you naughty?” I said; “answer me that.”
“Perhaps I was,” she went on; “but I did not expect him to be so silly. Hareton, if I gave you a book, would you take it now? I’ll try!”
She placed one she had been perusing on his hand; he flung it off, and muttered, if she did not give over, he would break her neck.
“Well, I shall put it here,” she said, “in the table-drawer; and I’m going to bed.”
Then she whispered me to watch whether he touched it, and departed. But he would not come near it; and so I informed her in the morning, to her great disappointment. I saw she was sorry for his persevering sulkiness and indolence: her conscience reproved her for frightening him off improving himself: she had done it effectually. But her ingenuity was at work to remedy the injury: while I ironed, or pursued other such stationary employments as I could not well do in the parlour, she would bring some pleasant volume and read it aloud to me. When Hareton was there, she generally paused in an interesting part, and left the book lying about: that she did repeatedly; but he was as obstinate as a mule, and, instead of snatching at her bait, in wet weather he took to smoking with Joseph; and they sat like automatons, one on each side of the fire, the elder happily too deaf to understand her wicked nonsense, as he would have called it, the younger doing his best to seem to disregard it. On fine evenings the latter followed his shooting expeditions, and Catherine yawned and sighed, and teased me to talk to her, and ran off into the court or garden the moment I began; and, as a last resource, cried, and said she was tired of living: her life was useless.
Mr. Heathcliff, who grew more and more disinclined to society, had almost banished Earnshaw from his apartment. Owing to an accident at the commencement of March, he became for some days a fixture in the kitchen. His gun burst while out on the hills by himself; a splinter cut his arm, and he lost a good deal of blood before he could reach home. The consequence was that, perforce, he was condemned to the fireside and tranquillity, till he made it up again. It suited Catherine to have him there: at any rate, it made her hate her room upstairs more than ever: and she would compel me to find out business below, that she might accompany me.
On Easter Monday, Joseph went to Gimmerton fair with some cattle; and, in the afternoon, I was busy getting up linen in the kitchen. Earnshaw sat, morose as usual, at the chimney corner, and my little mistress was beguiling an idle hour with drawing pictures on the window-panes, varying her amusement by smothered bursts of songs, and whispered ejaculations, and quick glances of annoyance and impatience in the direction of her cousin, who steadfastly smoked, and looked into the grate. At a notice that I could do with her no longer intercepting my light, she removed to the hearthstone. I bestowed little attention on her proceedings, but, presently, I heard her begin—“I’ve found out, Hareton, that I want—that I’m glad—that I should like you to be my cousin now, if you had not grown so cross to me, and so rough.”
Hareton returned no answer.
“Hareton, Hareton, Hareton! do you hear?” she continued.
“Get off wi’ ye!” he growled, with uncompromising gruffness.
“Let me take that pipe,” she said, cautiously advancing her hand and abstracting it from his mouth.
Before he could attempt to recover it, it was broken, and behind the fire. He swore at her and seized another.
“Stop,” she cried, “you must listen to me first; and I can’t speak while those clouds are floating in my face.”
“Will you go to the devil!” he exclaimed, ferociously, “and let me be!”
“No,” she persisted, “I won’t: I can’t tell what to do to make you talk to me; and you are determined not to understand. When I call you stupid, I don’t mean anything: I don’t mean that I despise you. Come, you shall take notice of me, Hareton: you are my cousin, and you shall own me.”
“I shall have naught to do wi’ you and your mucky pride, and your damned mocking tricks!” he answered. “I’ll go to hell, body and soul, before I look sideways after you again. Side out o’ t’ gate, now, this minute!”
Catherine frowned, and retreated to the window-seat chewing her lip, and endeavouring, by humming an eccentric tune, to conceal a growing tendency to sob.
“You should be friends with your cousin, Mr. Hareton,” I interrupted, “since she repents of her sauciness. It would do you a great deal of good: it would make you another man to have her for a companion.”
“A companion!” he cried; “when she hates me, and does not think me fit to wipe her shoon! Nay, if it made me a king, I’d not be scorned for seeking her good-will any more.”
“It is not I who hate you, it is you who hate me!” wept Cathy, no longer disguising her trouble. “You hate me as much as Mr. Heathcliff does, and more.”
“You’re a damned liar,” began Earnshaw: “why have I made him angry, by taking your part, then, a hundred times? and that when you sneered at and despised me, and—Go on plaguing me, and I’ll step in yonder, and say you worried me out of the kitchen!”
“I didn’t know you took my part,” she answered, drying her eyes; “and I was miserable and bitter at everybody; but now I thank you, and beg you to forgive me: what can I do besides?”
She returned to the hearth, and frankly extended her hand. He blackened and scowled like a thunder-cloud, and kept his fists resolutely clenched, and his gaze fixed on the ground. Catherine, by instinct, must have divined it was obdurate perversity, and not dislike, that prompted this dogged conduct; for, after remaining an instant undecided, she stooped and impressed on his cheek a gentle kiss. The little rogue thought I had not seen her, and, drawing back, she took her former station by the window, quite demurely. I shook my head reprovingly, and then she blushed and whispered—“Well! what should I have done, Ellen? He wouldn’t shake hands, and he wouldn’t look: I must show him some way that I like him—that I want to be friends.”
Whether the kiss convinced Hareton, I cannot tell: he was very careful, for some minutes, that his face should not be seen, and when he did raise it, he was sadly puzzled where to turn his eyes.
Catherine employed herself in wrapping a handsome book neatly in white paper, and having tied it with a bit of ribbon, and addressed it to “Mr. Hareton Earnshaw,” she desired me to be her ambassadress, and convey the present to its destined recipient.
“And tell him, if he’ll take it, I’ll come and teach him to read it right,” she said; “and, if he refuse it, I’ll go upstairs, and never tease him again.”
I carried it, and repeated the message; anxiously watched by my employer. Hareton would not open his fingers, so I laid it on his knee. He did not strike it off, either. I returned to my work. Catherine leaned her head and arms on the table, till she heard the slight rustle of the covering being removed; then she stole away, and quietly seated herself beside her cousin. He trembled, and his face glowed: all his rudeness and all his surly harshness had deserted him: he could not summon courage, at first, to utter a syllable in reply to her questioning look, and her murmured petition.
“Say you forgive me, Hareton, do. You can make me so happy by speaking that little word.”
He muttered something inaudible.
“And you’ll be my friend?” added Catherine, interrogatively.
“Nay, you’ll be ashamed of me every day of your life,” he answered; “and the more ashamed, the more you know me; and I cannot bide it.”
“So you won’t be my friend?” she said, smiling as sweet as honey, and creeping close up.
I overheard no further distinguishable talk, but, on looking round again, I perceived two such radiant countenances bent over the page of the accepted book, that I did not doubt the treaty had been ratified on both sides; and the enemies were, thenceforth, sworn allies.
The work they studied was full of costly pictures; and those and their position had charm enough to keep them unmoved till Joseph came home. He, poor man, was perfectly aghast at the spectacle of Catherine seated on the same bench with Hareton Earnshaw, leaning her hand on his shoulder; and confounded at his favourite’s endurance of her proximity: it affected him too deeply to allow an observation on the subject that night. His emotion was only revealed by the immense sighs he drew, as he solemnly spread his large Bible on the table, and overlaid it with dirty bank-notes from his pocket-book, the produce of the day’s transactions. At length he summoned Hareton from his seat.
“Tak’ these in to t’ maister, lad,” he said, “and bide there. I’s gang up to my own rahm. This hoile’s neither mensful nor seemly for us: we mun side out and seearch another.”
“Come, Catherine,” I said, “we must ‘side out’ too: I’ve done my ironing. Are you ready to go?”
“It is not eight o’clock!” she answered, rising unwillingly. “Hareton, I’ll leave this book upon the chimney-piece, and I’ll bring some more to-morrow.”
“Ony books that yah leave, I shall tak’ into th’ hahse,” said Joseph, “and it’ll be mitch if yah find ’em agean; soa, yah may plase yerseln!”
Cathy threatened that his library should pay for hers; and, smiling as she passed Hareton, went singing upstairs: lighter of heart, I venture to say, than ever she had been under that roof before; except, perhaps, during her earliest visits to Linton.
The intimacy thus commenced grew rapidly; though it encountered temporary interruptions. Earnshaw was not to be civilized with a wish, and my young lady was no philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but both their minds tending to the same point—one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed—they contrived in the end to reach it.
You see, Mr. Lockwood, it was easy enough to win Mrs. Heathcliff’s heart. But now, I’m glad you did not try. The crown of all my wishes will be the union of those two. I shall envy no one on their wedding day: there won’t be a happier woman than myself in England!
CHAPTER XXXIII
On the morrow of that Monday, Earnshaw being still unable to follow his ordinary employments, and therefore remaining about the house, I speedily found it would be impracticable to retain my charge beside me, as heretofore. She got downstairs before me, and out into the garden, where she had seen her cousin performing some easy work; and when I went to bid them come to breakfast, I saw she had persuaded him to clear a large space of ground from currant and gooseberry bushes, and they were busy planning together an importation of plants from the Grange.
I was terrified at the devastation which had been accomplished in a brief half-hour; the black-currant trees were the apple of Joseph’s eye, and she had just fixed her choice of a flower-bed in the midst of them.
“There! That will be all shown to the master,” I exclaimed, “the minute it is discovered. And what excuse have you to offer for taking such liberties with the garden? We shall have a fine explosion on the head of it: see if we don’t! Mr. Hareton, I wonder you should have no more wit than to go and make that mess at her bidding!”
“I’d forgotten they were Joseph’s,” answered Earnshaw, rather puzzled; “but I’ll tell him I did it.”
We always ate our meals with Mr. Heathcliff. I held the mistress’s post in making tea and carving; so I was indispensable at table. Catherine usually sat by me, but to-day she stole nearer to Hareton; and I presently saw she would have no more discretion in her friendship than she had in her hostility.
“Now, mind you don’t talk with and notice your cousin too much,” were my whispered instructions as we entered the room. “It will certainly annoy Mr. Heathcliff, and he’ll be mad at you both.”
“I’m not going to,” she answered.
The minute after, she had sidled to him, and was sticking primroses in his plate of porridge.
He dared not speak to her there: he dared hardly look; and yet she went on teasing, till he was twice on the point of being provoked to laugh. I frowned, and then she glanced towards the master: whose mind was occupied on other subjects than his company, as his countenance evinced; and she grew serious for an instant, scrutinizing him with deep gravity. Afterwards she turned, and recommenced her nonsense; at last, Hareton uttered a smothered laugh. Mr. Heathcliff started; his eye rapidly surveyed our faces. Catherine met it with her accustomed look of nervousness and yet defiance, which he abhorred.
“It is well you are out of my reach,” he exclaimed. “What fiend possesses you to stare back at me, continually, with those infernal eyes? Down with them! and don’t remind me of your existence again. I thought I had cured you of laughing.”
“It was me,” muttered Hareton.
“What do you say?” demanded the master.
Hareton looked at his plate, and did not repeat the confession. Mr. Heathcliff looked at him a bit, and then silently resumed his breakfast and his interrupted musing. We had nearly finished, and the two young people prudently shifted wider asunder, so I anticipated no further disturbance during that sitting: when Joseph appeared at the door, revealing by his quivering lip and furious eyes that the outrage committed on his precious shrubs was detected. He must have seen Cathy and her cousin about the spot before he examined it, for while his jaws worked like those of a cow chewing its cud, and rendered his speech difficult to understand, he began:—
“I mun hev’ my wage, and I mun goa! I hed aimed to dee wheare I’d sarved fur sixty year; and I thowt I’d lug my books up into t’ garret, and all my bits o’ stuff, and they sud hev’ t’ kitchen to theirseln; for t’ sake o’ quietness. It wur hard to gie up my awn hearthstun, but I thowt I could do that! But nah, shoo’s taan my garden fro’ me, and by th’ heart, maister, I cannot stand it! Yah may bend to th’ yoak an ye will—I noan used to ’t, and an old man doesn’t sooin get used to new barthens. I’d rayther arn my bite an’ my sup wi’ a hammer in th’ road!”
“Now, now, idiot!” interrupted Heathcliff, “cut it short! What’s your grievance? I’ll interfere in no quarrels between you and Nelly. She may thrust you into the coal-hole for anything I care.”
“It’s noan Nelly!” answered Joseph. “I sudn’t shift for Nelly—nasty ill nowt as shoo is. Thank God! shoo cannot stale t’ sowl o’ nob’dy! Shoo wer niver soa handsome, but what a body mud look at her ’bout winking. It’s yon flaysome, graceless quean, that’s witched our lad, wi’ her bold een and her forrard ways—till—Nay! it fair brusts my heart! He’s forgotten all I’ve done for him, and made on him, and goan and riven up a whole row o’ t’ grandest currant-trees i’ t’ garden!” and here he lamented outright; unmanned by a sense of his bitter injuries, and Earnshaw’s ingratitude and dangerous condition.
“Is the fool drunk?” asked Mr. Heathcliff. “Hareton, is it you he’s finding fault with?”
“I’ve pulled up two or three bushes,” replied the young man; “but I’m going to set ’em again.”
“And why have you pulled them up?” said the master.
Catherine wisely put in her tongue.
“We wanted to plant some flowers there,” she cried. “I’m the only person to blame, for I wished him to do it.”
“And who the devil gave you leave to touch a stick about the place?” demanded her father-in-law, much surprised. “And who ordered you to obey her?” he added, turning to Hareton.
The latter was speechless; his cousin replied—“You shouldn’t grudge a few yards of earth for me to ornament, when you have taken all my land!”
“Your land, insolent slut! You never had any,” said Heathcliff.
“And my money,” she continued; returning his angry glare, and meantime biting a piece of crust, the remnant of her breakfast.
“Silence!” he exclaimed. “Get done, and begone!”
“And Hareton’s land, and his money,” pursued the reckless thing. “Hareton and I are friends now; and I shall tell him all about you!”
The master seemed confounded a moment: he grew pale, and rose up, eyeing her all the while, with an expression of mortal hate.
“If you strike me, Hareton will strike you,” she said; “so you may as well sit down.”
“If Hareton does not turn you out of the room, I’ll strike him to hell,” thundered Heathcliff. “Damnable witch! dare you pretend to rouse him against me? Off with her! Do you hear? Fling her into the kitchen! I’ll kill her, Ellen Dean, if you let her come into my sight again!”
Hareton tried, under his breath, to persuade her to go.
“Drag her away!” he cried, savagely. “Are you staying to talk?” And he approached to execute his own command.
“He’ll not obey you, wicked man, any more,” said Catherine; “and he’ll soon detest you as much as I do.”
“Wisht! wisht!” muttered the young man, reproachfully; “I will not hear you speak so to him. Have done.”
“But you won’t let him strike me?” she cried.
“Come, then,” he whispered earnestly.
It was too late: Heathcliff had caught hold of her.
“Now, you go!” he said to Earnshaw. “Accursed witch! this time she has provoked me when I could not bear it; and I’ll make her repent it for ever!”
He had his hand in her hair; Hareton attempted to release her locks, entreating him not to hurt her that once. Heathcliff’s black eyes flashed; he seemed ready to tear Catherine in pieces, and I was just worked up to risk coming to the rescue, when of a sudden his fingers relaxed; he shifted his grasp from her head to her arm, and gazed intently in her face. Then he drew his hand over his eyes, stood a moment to collect himself apparently, and turning anew to Catherine, said, with assumed calmness—“You must learn to avoid putting me in a passion, or I shall really murder you some time! Go with Mrs. Dean, and keep with her; and confine your insolence to her ears. As to Hareton Earnshaw, if I see him listen to you, I’ll send him seeking his bread where he can get it! Your love will make him an outcast and a beggar. Nelly, take her; and leave me, all of you! Leave me!”
I led my young lady out: she was too glad of her escape to resist; the other followed, and Mr. Heathcliff had the room to himself till dinner. I had counselled Catherine to dine upstairs; but, as soon as he perceived her vacant seat, he sent me to call her. He spoke to none of us, ate very little, and went out directly afterwards, intimating that he should not return before evening.
The two new friends established themselves in the house during his absence; where I heard Hareton sternly check his cousin, on her offering a revelation of her father-in-law’s conduct to his father. He said he wouldn’t suffer a word to be uttered in his disparagement: if he were the devil, it didn’t signify; he would stand by him; and he’d rather she would abuse himself, as she used to, than begin on Mr. Heathcliff. Catherine was waxing cross at this; but he found means to make her hold her tongue, by asking how she would like him to speak ill of her father? Then she comprehended that Earnshaw took the master’s reputation home to himself; and was attached by ties stronger than reason could break—chains, forged by habit, which it would be cruel to attempt to loosen. She showed a good heart, thenceforth, in avoiding both complaints and expressions of antipathy concerning Heathcliff; and confessed to me her sorrow that she had endeavoured to raise a bad spirit between him and Hareton: indeed, I don’t believe she has ever breathed a syllable, in the latter’s hearing, against her oppressor since.
When this slight disagreement was over, they were friends again, and as busy as possible in their several occupations of pupil and teacher. I came in to sit with them, after I had done my work; and I felt so soothed and comforted to watch them, that I did not notice how time got on. You know, they both appeared in a measure my children: I had long been proud of one; and now, I was sure, the other would be a source of equal satisfaction. His honest, warm, and intelligent nature shook off rapidly the clouds of ignorance and degradation in which it had been bred; and Catherine’s sincere commendations acted as a spur to his industry. His brightening mind brightened his features, and added spirit and nobility to their aspect: I could hardly fancy it the same individual I had beheld on the day I discovered my little lady at Wuthering Heights, after her expedition to the Crags. While I admired and they laboured, dusk drew on, and with it returned the master. He came upon us quite unexpectedly, entering by the front way, and had a full view of the whole three, ere we could raise our heads to glance at him. Well, I reflected, there was never a pleasanter, or more harmless sight; and it will be a burning shame to scold them. The red fire-light glowed on their two bonny heads, and revealed their faces animated with the eager interest of children; for, though he was twenty-three and she eighteen, each had so much of novelty to feel and learn, that neither experienced nor evinced the sentiments of sober disenchanted maturity.
They lifted their eyes together, to encounter Mr. Heathcliff: perhaps you have never remarked that their eyes are precisely similar, and they are those of Catherine Earnshaw. The present Catherine has no other likeness to her, except a breadth of forehead, and a certain arch of the nostril that makes her appear rather haughty, whether she will or not. With Hareton the resemblance is carried farther: it is singular at all times, then it was particularly striking; because his senses were alert, and his mental faculties wakened to unwonted activity. I suppose this resemblance disarmed Mr. Heathcliff: he walked to the hearth in evident agitation; but it quickly subsided as he looked at the young man: or, I should say, altered its character; for it was there yet. He took the book from his hand, and glanced at the open page, then returned it without any observation; merely signing Catherine away: her companion lingered very little behind her, and I was about to depart also, but he bid me sit still.
“It is a poor conclusion, is it not?” he observed, having brooded a while on the scene he had just witnessed: “an absurd termination to my violent exertions? I get levers and mattocks to demolish the two houses, and train myself to be capable of working like Hercules, and when everything is ready and in my power, I find the will to lift a slate off either roof has vanished! My old enemies have not beaten me; now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives: I could do it; and none could hinder me. But where is the use? I don’t care for striking: I can’t take the trouble to raise my hand! That sounds as if I had been labouring the whole time only to exhibit a fine trait of magnanimity. It is far from being the case: I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.
“Nelly, there is a strange change approaching; I’m in its shadow at present. I take so little interest in my daily life that I hardly remember to eat and drink. Those two who have left the room are the only objects which retain a distinct material appearance to me; and that appearance causes me pain, amounting to agony. About her I won’t speak; and I don’t desire to think; but I earnestly wish she were invisible: her presence invokes only maddening sensations. He moves me differently: and yet if I could do it without seeming insane, I’d never see him again! You’ll perhaps think me rather inclined to become so,” he added, making an effort to smile, “if I try to describe the thousand forms of past associations and ideas he awakens or embodies. But you’ll not talk of what I tell you; and my mind is so eternally secluded in itself, it is tempting at last to turn it out to another.
“Five minutes ago Hareton seemed a personification of my youth, not a human being; I felt to him in such a variety of ways, that it would have been impossible to have accosted him rationally. In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine connected him fearfully with her. That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least: for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day—I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own features—mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her! Well, Hareton’s aspect was the ghost of my immortal love; of my wild endeavours to hold my right; my degradation, my pride, my happiness, and my anguish—
“But it is frenzy to repeat these thoughts to you: only it will let you know why, with a reluctance to be always alone, his society is no benefit; rather an aggravation of the constant torment I suffer: and it partly contributes to render me regardless how he and his cousin go on together. I can give them no attention any more.”
“But what do you mean by a change, Mr. Heathcliff?” I said, alarmed at his manner: though he was neither in danger of losing his senses, nor dying, according to my judgment: he was quite strong and healthy; and, as to his reason, from childhood he had a delight in dwelling on dark things, and entertaining odd fancies. He might have had a monomania on the subject of his departed idol; but on every other point his wits were as sound as mine.
“I shall not know that till it comes,” he said; “I’m only half conscious of it now.”
“You have no feeling of illness, have you?” I asked.
“No, Nelly, I have not,” he answered.
“Then you are not afraid of death?” I pursued.
“Afraid? No!” he replied. “I have neither a fear, nor a presentiment, nor a hope of death. Why should I? With my hard constitution and temperate mode of living, and unperilous occupations, I ought to, and probably shall, remain above ground till there is scarcely a black hair on my head. And yet I cannot continue in this condition! I have to remind myself to breathe—almost to remind my heart to beat! And it is like bending back a stiff spring: it is by compulsion that I do the slightest act not prompted by one thought; and by compulsion that I notice anything alive or dead, which is not associated with one universal idea. I have a single wish, and my whole being and faculties are yearning to attain it. They have yearned towards it so long, and so unwaveringly, that I’m convinced it will be reached—and soon—because it has devoured my existence: I am swallowed up in the anticipation of its fulfilment. My confessions have not relieved me; but they may account for some otherwise unaccountable phases of humour which I show. O God! It is a long fight; I wish it were over!”
He began to pace the room, muttering terrible things to himself, till I was inclined to believe, as he said Joseph did, that conscience had turned his heart to an earthly hell. I wondered greatly how it would end. Though he seldom before had revealed this state of mind, even by looks, it was his habitual mood, I had no doubt: he asserted it himself; but not a soul, from his general bearing, would have conjectured the fact. You did not when you saw him, Mr. Lockwood: and at the period of which I speak, he was just the same as then; only fonder of continued solitude, and perhaps still more laconic in company.
CHAPTER XXXIV
For some days after that evening, Mr. Heathcliff shunned meeting us at meals; yet he would not consent formally to exclude Hareton and Cathy. He had an aversion to yielding so completely to his feelings, choosing rather to absent himself; and eating once in twenty-four hours seemed sufficient sustenance for him.
One night, after the family were in bed, I heard him go downstairs, and out at the front door. I did not hear him re-enter, and in the morning I found he was still away. We were in April then: the weather was sweet and warm, the grass as green as showers and sun could make it, and the two dwarf apple-trees near the southern wall in full bloom. After breakfast, Catherine insisted on my bringing a chair and sitting with my work under the fir-trees at the end of the house; and she beguiled Hareton, who had perfectly recovered from his accident, to dig and arrange her little garden, which was shifted to that corner by the influence of Joseph’s complaints. I was comfortably revelling in the spring fragrance around, and the beautiful soft blue overhead, when my young lady, who had run down near the gate to procure some primrose roots for a border, returned only half laden, and informed us that Mr. Heathcliff was coming in. “And he spoke to me,” she added, with a perplexed countenance.
“What did he say?” asked Hareton.
“He told me to begone as fast as I could,” she answered. “But he looked so different from his usual look that I stopped a moment to stare at him.”
“How?” he inquired.
“Why, almost bright and cheerful. No, almost nothing—very much excited, and wild, and glad!” she replied.
“Night-walking amuses him, then,” I remarked, affecting a careless manner: in reality as surprised as she was, and anxious to ascertain the truth of her statement; for to see the master looking glad would not be an every-day spectacle. I framed an excuse to go in. Heathcliff stood at the open door; he was pale, and he trembled: yet, certainly, he had a strange joyful glitter in his eyes, that altered the aspect of his whole face.
“Will you have some breakfast?” I said. “You must be hungry, rambling about all night!” I wanted to discover where he had been, but I did not like to ask directly.
“No, I’m not hungry,” he answered, averting his head, and speaking rather contemptuously, as if he guessed I was trying to divine the occasion of his good humour.
I felt perplexed: I didn’t know whether it were not a proper opportunity to offer a bit of admonition.
“I don’t think it right to wander out of doors,” I observed, “instead of being in bed: it is not wise, at any rate this moist season. I daresay you’ll catch a bad cold, or a fever: you have something the matter with you now!”
“Nothing but what I can bear,” he replied; “and with the greatest pleasure, provided you’ll leave me alone: get in, and don’t annoy me.”
I obeyed: and, in passing, I noticed he breathed as fast as a cat.
“Yes!” I reflected to myself, “we shall have a fit of illness. I cannot conceive what he has been doing.”
That noon he sat down to dinner with us, and received a heaped-up plate from my hands, as if he intended to make amends for previous fasting.
“I’ve neither cold nor fever, Nelly,” he remarked, in allusion to my morning’s speech; “and I’m ready to do justice to the food you give me.”
He took his knife and fork, and was going to commence eating, when the inclination appeared to become suddenly extinct. He laid them on the table, looked eagerly towards the window, then rose and went out. We saw him walking to and fro in the garden while we concluded our meal, and Earnshaw said he’d go and ask why he would not dine: he thought we had grieved him some way.
“Well, is he coming?” cried Catherine, when her cousin returned.
“Nay,” he answered; “but he’s not angry: he seemed rarely pleased indeed; only I made him impatient by speaking to him twice; and then he bid me be off to you: he wondered how I could want the company of anybody else.”
I set his plate to keep warm on the fender; and after an hour or two he re-entered, when the room was clear, in no degree calmer: the same unnatural—it was unnatural—appearance of joy under his black brows; the same bloodless hue, and his teeth visible, now and then, in a kind of smile; his frame shivering, not as one shivers with chill or weakness, but as a tight-stretched cord vibrates—a strong thrilling, rather than trembling.
I will ask what is the matter, I thought; or who should? And I exclaimed—“Have you heard any good news, Mr. Heathcliff? You look uncommonly animated.”
“Where should good news come from to me?” he said. “I’m animated with hunger; and, seemingly, I must not eat.”
“Your dinner is here,” I returned; “why won’t you get it?”
“I don’t want it now,” he muttered, hastily: “I’ll wait till supper. And, Nelly, once for all, let me beg you to warn Hareton and the other away from me. I wish to be troubled by nobody: I wish to have this place to myself.”
“Is there some new reason for this banishment?” I inquired. “Tell me why you are so queer, Mr. Heathcliff? Where were you last night? I’m not putting the question through idle curiosity, but—”
“You are putting the question through very idle curiosity,” he interrupted, with a laugh. “Yet I’ll answer it. Last night I was on the threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven. I have my eyes on it: hardly three feet to sever me! And now you’d better go! You’ll neither see nor hear anything to frighten you, if you refrain from prying.”
Having swept the hearth and wiped the table, I departed; more perplexed than ever.
He did not quit the house again that afternoon, and no one intruded on his solitude; till, at eight o’clock, I deemed it proper, though unsummoned, to carry a candle and his supper to him. He was leaning against the ledge of an open lattice, but not looking out: his face was turned to the interior gloom. The fire had smouldered to ashes; the room was filled with the damp, mild air of the cloudy evening; and so still, that not only the murmur of the beck down Gimmerton was distinguishable, but its ripples and its gurgling over the pebbles, or through the large stones which it could not cover. I uttered an ejaculation of discontent at seeing the dismal grate, and commenced shutting the casements, one after another, till I came to his.
“Must I close this?” I asked, in order to rouse him; for he would not stir.
The light flashed on his features as I spoke. Oh, Mr. Lockwood, I cannot express what a terrible start I got by the momentary view! Those deep black eyes! That smile, and ghastly paleness! It appeared to me, not Mr. Heathcliff, but a goblin; and, in my terror, I let the candle bend towards the wall, and it left me in darkness.
“Yes, close it,” he replied, in his familiar voice. “There, that is pure awkwardness! Why did you hold the candle horizontally? Be quick, and bring another.”
I hurried out in a foolish state of dread, and said to Joseph—“The master wishes you to take him a light and rekindle the fire.” For I dared not go in myself again just then.
Joseph rattled some fire into the shovel, and went: but he brought it back immediately, with the supper-tray in his other hand, explaining that Mr. Heathcliff was going to bed, and he wanted nothing to eat till morning. We heard him mount the stairs directly; he did not proceed to his ordinary chamber, but turned into that with the panelled bed: its window, as I mentioned before, is wide enough for anybody to get through; and it struck me that he plotted another midnight excursion, of which he had rather we had no suspicion.
“Is he a ghoul or a vampire?” I mused. I had read of such hideous incarnate demons. And then I set myself to reflect how I had tended him in infancy, and watched him grow to youth, and followed him almost through his whole course; and what absurd nonsense it was to yield to that sense of horror. “But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harboured by a good man to his bane?” muttered Superstition, as I dozed into unconsciousness. And I began, half dreaming, to weary myself with imagining some fit parentage for him; and, repeating my waking meditations, I tracked his existence over again, with grim variations; at last, picturing his death and funeral: of which, all I can remember is, being exceedingly vexed at having the task of dictating an inscription for his monument, and consulting the sexton about it; and, as he had no surname, and we could not tell his age, we were obliged to content ourselves with the single word, “Heathcliff.” That came true: we were. If you enter the kirkyard, you’ll read, on his headstone, only that, and the date of his death.
Dawn restored me to common sense. I rose, and went into the garden, as soon as I could see, to ascertain if there were any footmarks under his window. There were none. “He has stayed at home,” I thought, “and he’ll be all right to-day.” I prepared breakfast for the household, as was my usual custom, but told Hareton and Catherine to get theirs ere the master came down, for he lay late. They preferred taking it out of doors, under the trees, and I set a little table to accommodate them.
On my re-entrance, I found Mr. Heathcliff below. He and Joseph were conversing about some farming business; he gave clear, minute directions concerning the matter discussed, but he spoke rapidly, and turned his head continually aside, and had the same excited expression, even more exaggerated. When Joseph quitted the room he took his seat in the place he generally chose, and I put a basin of coffee before him. He drew it nearer, and then rested his arms on the table, and looked at the opposite wall, as I supposed, surveying one particular portion, up and down, with glittering, restless eyes, and with such eager interest that he stopped breathing during half a minute together.
“Come now,” I exclaimed, pushing some bread against his hand, “eat and drink that, while it is hot: it has been waiting near an hour.”
He didn’t notice me, and yet he smiled. I’d rather have seen him gnash his teeth than smile so.
“Mr. Heathcliff! master!” I cried, “don’t, for God’s sake, stare as if you saw an unearthly vision.”
“Don’t, for God’s sake, shout so loud,” he replied. “Turn round, and tell me, are we by ourselves?”
“Of course,” was my answer; “of course we are.”
Still, I involuntarily obeyed him, as if I was not quite sure. With a sweep of his hand he cleared a vacant space in front among the breakfast things, and leant forward to gaze more at his ease.
Now, I perceived he was not looking at the wall; for when I regarded him alone, it seemed exactly that he gazed at something within two yards’ distance. And whatever it was, it communicated, apparently, both pleasure and pain in exquisite extremes: at least the anguished, yet raptured, expression of his countenance suggested that idea. The fancied object was not fixed, either: his eyes pursued it with unwearied diligence, and, even in speaking to me, were never weaned away. I vainly reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food: if he stirred to touch anything in compliance with my entreaties, if he stretched his hand out to get a piece of bread, his fingers clenched before they reached it, and remained on the table, forgetful of their aim.
I sat, a model of patience, trying to attract his absorbed attention from its engrossing speculation; till he grew irritable, and got up, asking why I would not allow him to have his own time in taking his meals? and saying that on the next occasion I needn’t wait: I might set the things down and go. Having uttered these words he left the house, slowly sauntered down the garden path, and disappeared through the gate.
The hours crept anxiously by: another evening came. I did not retire to rest till late, and when I did, I could not sleep. He returned after midnight, and, instead of going to bed, shut himself into the room beneath. I listened, and tossed about, and, finally, dressed and descended. It was too irksome to lie there, harassing my brain with a hundred idle misgivings.
I distinguished Mr. Heathcliff’s step, restlessly measuring the floor, and he frequently broke the silence by a deep inspiration, resembling a groan. He muttered detached words also; the only one I could catch was the name of Catherine, coupled with some wild term of endearment or suffering; and spoken as one would speak to a person present; low and earnest, and wrung from the depth of his soul. I had not courage to walk straight into the apartment; but I desired to divert him from his reverie, and therefore fell foul of the kitchen fire, stirred it, and began to scrape the cinders. It drew him forth sooner than I expected. He opened the door immediately, and said—“Nelly, come here—is it morning? Come in with your light.”
“It is striking four,” I answered. “You want a candle to take upstairs: you might have lit one at this fire.”
“No, I don’t wish to go upstairs,” he said. “Come in, and kindle me a fire, and do anything there is to do about the room.”
“I must blow the coals red first, before I can carry any,” I replied, getting a chair and the bellows.
He roamed to and fro, meantime, in a state approaching distraction; his heavy sighs succeeding each other so thick as to leave no space for common breathing between.
“When day breaks I’ll send for Green,” he said; “I wish to make some legal inquiries of him while I can bestow a thought on those matters, and while I can act calmly. I have not written my will yet; and how to leave my property I cannot determine. I wish I could annihilate it from the face of the earth.”
“I would not talk so, Mr. Heathcliff,” I interposed. “Let your will be a while: you’ll be spared to repent of your many injustices yet! I never expected that your nerves would be disordered: they are, at present, marvellously so, however; and almost entirely through your own fault. The way you’ve passed these three last days might knock up a Titan. Do take some food, and some repose. You need only look at yourself in a glass to see how you require both. Your cheeks are hollow, and your eyes blood-shot, like a person starving with hunger and going blind with loss of sleep.”
“It is not my fault that I cannot eat or rest,” he replied. “I assure you it is through no settled designs. I’ll do both, as soon as I possibly can. But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water rest within arms’ length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I’ll rest. Well, never mind Mr. Green: as to repenting of my injustices, I’ve done no injustice, and I repent of nothing. I’m too happy; and yet I’m not happy enough. My soul’s bliss kills my body, but does not satisfy itself.”
“Happy, master?” I cried. “Strange happiness! If you would hear me without being angry, I might offer some advice that would make you happier.”
“What is that?” he asked. “Give it.”
“You are aware, Mr. Heathcliff,” I said, “that from the time you were thirteen years old you have lived a selfish, unchristian life; and probably hardly had a Bible in your hands during all that period. You must have forgotten the contents of the book, and you may not have space to search it now. Could it be hurtful to send for some one—some minister of any denomination, it does not matter which—to explain it, and show you how very far you have erred from its precepts; and how unfit you will be for its heaven, unless a change takes place before you die?”
“I’m rather obliged than angry, Nelly,” he said, “for you remind me of the manner in which I desire to be buried. It is to be carried to the churchyard in the evening. You and Hareton may, if you please, accompany me: and mind, particularly, to notice that the sexton obeys my directions concerning the two coffins! No minister need come; nor need anything be said over me.—I tell you I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me.”
“And supposing you persevered in your obstinate fast, and died by that means, and they refused to bury you in the precincts of the kirk?” I said, shocked at his godless indifference. “How would you like it?”
“They won’t do that,” he replied: “if they did, you must have me removed secretly; and if you neglect it you shall prove, practically, that the dead are not annihilated!”
As soon as he heard the other members of the family stirring he retired to his den, and I breathed freer. But in the afternoon, while Joseph and Hareton were at their work, he came into the kitchen again, and, with a wild look, bid me come and sit in the house: he wanted somebody with him. I declined; telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will to be his companion alone.
“I believe you think me a fiend,” he said, with his dismal laugh: “something too horrible to live under a decent roof.” Then turning to Catherine, who was there, and who drew behind me at his approach, he added, half sneeringly,—“Will you come, chuck? I’ll not hurt you. No! to you I’ve made myself worse than the devil. Well, there is one who won’t shrink from my company! By God! she’s relentless. Oh, damn it! It’s unutterably too much for flesh and blood to bear—even mine.”
He solicited the society of no one more. At dusk he went into his chamber. Through the whole night, and far into the morning, we heard him groaning and murmuring to himself. Hareton was anxious to enter; but I bid him fetch Mr. Kenneth, and he should go in and see him. When he came, and I requested admittance and tried to open the door, I found it locked; and Heathcliff bid us be damned. He was better, and would be left alone; so the doctor went away.
The following evening was very wet: indeed, it poured down till day-dawn; and, as I took my morning walk round the house, I observed the master’s window swinging open, and the rain driving straight in. He cannot be in bed, I thought: those showers would drench him through. He must either be up or out. But I’ll make no more ado, I’ll go boldly and look.
Having succeeded in obtaining entrance with another key, I ran to unclose the panels, for the chamber was vacant; quickly pushing them aside, I peeped in. Mr. Heathcliff was there—laid on his back. His eyes met mine so keen and fierce, I started; and then he seemed to smile. I could not think him dead: but his face and throat were washed with rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still. The lattice, flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill; no blood trickled from the broken skin, and when I put my fingers to it, I could doubt no more: he was dead and stark!
I hasped the window; I combed his black long hair from his forehead; I tried to close his eyes: to extinguish, if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation before any one else beheld it. They would not shut: they seemed to sneer at my attempts; and his parted lips and sharp white teeth sneered too! Taken with another fit of cowardice, I cried out for Joseph. Joseph shuffled up and made a noise, but resolutely refused to meddle with him.
“Th’ divil’s harried off his soul,” he cried, “and he may hev’ his carcass into t’ bargin, for aught I care! Ech! what a wicked ’un he looks, girning at death!” and the old sinner grinned in mockery. I thought he intended to cut a caper round the bed; but suddenly composing himself, he fell on his knees, and raised his hands, and returned thanks that the lawful master and the ancient stock were restored to their rights.
I felt stunned by the awful event; and my memory unavoidably recurred to former times with a sort of oppressive sadness. But poor Hareton, the most wronged, was the only one who really suffered much. He sat by the corpse all night, weeping in bitter earnest. He pressed its hand, and kissed the sarcastic, savage face that every one else shrank from contemplating; and bemoaned him with that strong grief which springs naturally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tempered steel.
Mr. Kenneth was perplexed to pronounce of what disorder the master died. I concealed the fact of his having swallowed nothing for four days, fearing it might lead to trouble, and then, I am persuaded, he did not abstain on purpose: it was the consequence of his strange illness, not the cause.
We buried him, to the scandal of the whole neighbourhood, as he wished. Earnshaw and I, the sexton, and six men to carry the coffin, comprehended the whole attendance. The six men departed when they had let it down into the grave: we stayed to see it covered. Hareton, with a streaming face, dug green sods, and laid them over the brown mould himself: at present it is as smooth and verdant as its companion mounds—and I hope its tenant sleeps as soundly. But the country folks, if you ask them, would swear on the Bible that he walks: there are those who speak to having met him near the church, and on the moor, and even within this house. Idle tales, you’ll say, and so say I. Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on ’em looking out of his chamber window on every rainy night since his death:—and an odd thing happened to me about a month ago. I was going to the Grange one evening—a dark evening, threatening thunder—and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him; he was crying terribly; and I supposed the lambs were skittish, and would not be guided.
“What is the matter, my little man?” I asked.
“There’s Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t’ nab,” he blubbered, “un’ I darnut pass ’em.”
I saw nothing; but neither the sheep nor he would go on, so I bid him take the road lower down. He probably raised the phantoms from thinking, as he traversed the moors alone, on the nonsense he had heard his parents and companions repeat. Yet, still, I don’t like being out in the dark now; and I don’t like being left by myself in this grim house: I cannot help it; I shall be glad when they leave it, and shift to the Grange.
“They are going to the Grange, then?” I said.
“Yes,” answered Mrs. Dean, “as soon as they are married, and that will be on New Year’s Day.”
“And who will live here then?”
“Why, Joseph will take care of the house, and, perhaps, a lad to keep him company. They will live in the kitchen, and the rest will be shut up.”
“For the use of such ghosts as choose to inhabit it?” I observed.
“No, Mr. Lockwood,” said Nelly, shaking her head. “I believe the dead are at peace: but it is not right to speak of them with levity.”
At that moment the garden gate swung to; the ramblers were returning.
“They are afraid of nothing,” I grumbled, watching their approach through the window. “Together, they would brave Satan and all his legions.”
As they stepped on to the door-stones, and halted to take a last look at the moon—or, more correctly, at each other by her light—I felt irresistibly impelled to escape them again; and, pressing a remembrance into the hand of Mrs. Dean, and disregarding her expostulations at my rudeness, I vanished through the kitchen as they opened the house-door; and so should have confirmed Joseph in his opinion of his fellow-servant’s gay indiscretions, had he not fortunately recognised me for a respectable character by the sweet ring of a sovereign at his feet.
My walk home was lengthened by a diversion in the direction of the kirk. When beneath its walls, I perceived decay had made progress, even in seven months: many a window showed black gaps deprived of glass; and slates jutted off, here and there, beyond the right line of the roof, to be gradually worked off in coming autumn storms.
I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next the moor: the middle one grey, and half buried in heath; Edgar Linton’s only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff’s still bare.
I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
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they”re said it’s gping to rain = họ nói trời sắp mưa
=
brig = bắc cầu
pear = quả lê
=
desperate = tuyệt vọng
=
made a bet = đặt cược
argued = Tranh luận
banknote = giấy bạc
starve = chết đói
arguing = cãi nhau
confuse = bối rối
=
stared = nhìn chằm chằm
=
nervous = lo lắng
honest = trung thực
decision = phán quyết
nodded = gật đầu
node = nút
attractive = hấp dẫn
unattractive = không hấp dẫn
claim = khẳng định
=
curious = tò mò
curse = nguyền rủa
moor = thả neo
terified = sợ hãi
=
on the edge of the moor = trên các cạnh của đồng hoang
hound = chó săn
gigantic black dog = chó đen khổng lồ
nephew = cháu trai
crime = tội phạm
he was broad and strong = anh ấy rộng và mạnh mẽ
i have never worn them = tôi chưa bao giờ mặc chúng
there in at cab = ở đó trong xe taxi
beard = râu
whipped = quất roi
disappeared = biến mất
fortune = vận may
fortuner = vận may
=
many men will murder their best friend = nhiều người đàn ông sẽ giết người bạn thân nhất của họ
i have brought my army revolver = tôi đã mang theo khẩu súng lục ổ quay quân đội của tôi
made me shiver = làm tôi rùng mình
carriage = xe
pale = tái nhợt
=
a pale face came out of the house = một khuôn mặt nhợt nhạt bước ra khỏi nhà
=
he greeted sir Hr = anh chào anh Hr
i study nature = tôi học thiên nhiên
the wind blows tthrough on the rocks = gió thổi qua những tảng đá
=
stay on the path = ở lại trên con đường
corridor = hành lang
=
howling = rú lên
wise = khôn ngoan
horror = kinh dị
rushed = vội vã
pusned = bị trừng phạt
behaved = cư xử
her orders = mệnh lệnh của cô ấy
blame = đổ tội
wicked = độc ác
=
who was a kind master to me = ai là người thầy tốt với tôi
Titties = ngực
interested = thú vị
interesting = hấp dẫn
ferry = chiếc phà
=
scream = la hét
the man took her money = người đàn ông đã lấy tiền của cô ấy
i got you into all this = tôi đã đưa bạn vào tất cả những điều này
wise = khôn ngoan
wick = tim
bible = kinh thánh
glad = vui mừng
bitterly = cay đắng
fetch = tìm về
mistress = tình nhân
burial = Mai táng
suprising = đáng ngạc nhiên
pale = tái nhợt
treated = điều trị
poor creature = sinh vật đáng thương
i cried sharply = tôi đã khóc rất nhiều
nonesense = vớ vẩn
nonesense = vớ vẩn
wicked = độc ác
fools = đồ ngu
not so loud = không quá to
fierce = mạnh mẽ
unconscious = bất tỉnh
swearing = chửi thề
gipsy = người du mục
devil = ác quỷ
horror = kinh dị
it’s bleeding badly = nó đang chảy máu nặng
i’d bettern put a bandage = tôi nên băng bó lại
he let her run around with such a companion = anh ấy để cô ấy chạy loanh quanh với một người bạn đồng hành như vậy
cleaned her wound = làm sạch vết thương của cô ấy
behave = ứng xử
manner = thái độ
persuading = thuyết phục
appearance = vẻ bề ngoài
absense = vắng mặt
hatless = không đội mũ
bothered to wash = làm phiền để rửa
in spite of this, = bất chấp điều này,
glad = vui mừng
rushed up = lao lên
but ashaemed and proud = nhưng xấu hổ và tự hào
misrably = một cách khốn khổ
delighted = vui mừng
scolded = mắng mỏ
inherit a fortune = kế thừa một tài sản
character = tính cách
encourage = khuyến khích
desperately = tuyệt vọng
desperate = tuyệt vọng
despair = tuyệt vọng
scorn = khinh bỉ
persuaded = thuyết phục
growled = gầm gừ
revange = báo thù
he’s treated me like this = anh ấy đối xử với tôi như thế này
despair = tuyệt vọng
swore = đã thề
scold = trách mắng
behaviour = hành vi
she was proud and quick-tempered = cô ấy kiêu hãnh và nóng nảy
she led = cô ấy đã dẫn
influence = ảnh hưởng
annoyed = khó chịu
rude = bất lịch sự
amusing = vui
dull = đần độn
fondness = thật thà
but he no longer expressed his fondness for her in word = nhưng anh không còn bày tỏ tình cảm với cô ấy bằng lời nói
absent = vắng mặt
scolded = mắng mỏ
you never tell me before that you didn’t lile my company (ddoongf hanhf) = bạn chưa bao giờ nói với tôi rằng bạn không thích công ty của tôi (ddoongf hanhf)
delight = Hân hoan
pretending to dust the furniture = giả vờ phủi bụi đồ đạc
she cruelly scrached my arm = cô ấy tàn nhẫn cào vào cánh tay tôi
you lying creature = đồ dối trá
sobbling = thổn thức
shook = lắc
rushed up = lao lên
pale = tái nhợt
miserable = khổ sở
ashamed of you = Xấu hổ về bạn
hesitated = lưỡng lự
encourage = khuyến khích
call out = gọi ra
shelfish child = đứa trẻ kệch cỡm
quarrel = cuộc tranh cãi
swallow = nuốt
agressively = hung hăng
aggressively = tích cực
staring = nhìn chằm chằm
gasp in horror = há hốc mồm kinh hoàng
enemy’s son = con trai của kẻ thù
beg = ăn xin
to the devil with you = với ma quỷ với bạn
a pity = một điều đáng tiếc
muttered = lẩm bẩm
encourage = khuyến khích
he must be a fool to ask you = anh ta phải là một kẻ ngốc để hỏi bạn
seashore = bờ biển
seaweed = rong biển
dump = bãi rác
mASSIVE = to lớn
SARCASM = MỈA MAI
panic = hoảng loạn
pandemic = dịch bệnh
stagnant = trì trệ
fraud = gian lận
sutf = sutf
casualy = người thường
blob = bãi
scorching = thiêu đốt
humid = ẩm ướt
muggy = nóng ẩm
blustery = = đỏng đảnh =
breezy = thoáng mát
misty = sương mù
frog = con ếch
hazy = mơ hồ
=
=
potiental = tiềm năng
threatening = đe dọa
threat = mối đe dọa
crim = tội ác
crime = tội phạm
=
raging = hoành hành
=
precipitation = sự kết tủa
they’re calling for rain = họ đang kêu mưa
they”re said it’s gping to rain = họ nói trời sắp mưa
=
brig = bắc cầu
pear = quả lê
=
desperate = tuyệt vọng
=
made a bet = đặt cược
argued = Tranh luận
banknote = giấy bạc
starve = chết đói
arguing = cãi nhau
confuse = bối rối
=
stared = nhìn chằm chằm
=
nervous = lo lắng
honest = trung thực
decision = phán quyết
nodded = gật đầu
node = nút
attractive = hấp dẫn
unattractive = không hấp dẫn
claim = khẳng định
=
curious = tò mò
curse = nguyền rủa
moor = thả neo
terified = sợ hãi
=
on the edge of the moor = trên các cạnh của đồng hoang
hound = chó săn
gigantic black dog = chó đen khổng lồ
nephew = cháu trai
crime = tội phạm
he was broad and strong = anh ấy rộng và mạnh mẽ
i have never worn them = tôi chưa bao giờ mặc chúng
there in at cab = ở đó trong xe taxi
beard = râu
whipped = quất roi
disappeared = biến mất
fortune = vận may
fortuner = vận may
=
many men will murder their best friend = nhiều người đàn ông sẽ giết người bạn thân nhất của họ
i have brought my army revolver = tôi đã mang theo khẩu súng lục ổ quay quân đội của tôi
made me shiver = làm tôi rùng mình
carriage = xe
pale = tái nhợt
=
a pale face came out of the house = một khuôn mặt nhợt nhạt bước ra khỏi nhà
=
he greeted sir Hr = anh chào anh Hr
i study nature = tôi học thiên nhiên
the wind blows tthrough on the rocks = gió thổi qua những tảng đá
=
stay on the path = ở lại trên con đường
corridor = hành lang
=
howling = rú lên
wise = khôn ngoan
horror = kinh dị
rushed = vội vã
pusned = bị trừng phạt
behaved = cư xử
her orders = mệnh lệnh của cô ấy
blame = đổ tội
wicked = độc ác
=
who was a kind master to me = ai là người thầy tốt với tôi
Titties = ngực
interested = thú vị
interesting = hấp dẫn
ferry = chiếc phà
=
scream = la hét
the man took her money = người đàn ông đã lấy tiền của cô ấy
i got you into all this = tôi đã đưa bạn vào tất cả những điều này
wise = khôn ngoan
wick = tim
bible = kinh thánh
glad = vui mừng
bitterly = cay đắng
fetch = tìm về
mistress = tình nhân
burial = Mai táng
suprising = đáng ngạc nhiên
pale = tái nhợt
treated = điều trị
poor creature = sinh vật đáng thương
i cried sharply = tôi đã khóc rất nhiều
nonesense = vớ vẩn
=
=
violent = hung bạo
a pleasant companion = một người bạn đồng hành dễ chịu
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CONTENTS
I. INTO THE PRIMITIVE
II. THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG
III. THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST
IV. WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP
V. THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL
VI. FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN
VII. THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL
I
INTO THE PRIMITIVE
“Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at custom’s chain,
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferine strain.”
B
UCK did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.
Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller’s place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants’ cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape
5
arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge Miller’s boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.
And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other dogs. There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did not count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless,—strange creatures that rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground. On the other hand, there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.
But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was his. He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge’s sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire; he carried the Judge’s grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches. Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king,—king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller’s place, humans included.
His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge’s inseparable companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father. He was not so large,—he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds,—for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog. Nevertheless, one hundred and forty pounds, to which was added the dignity that comes of good living and universal respect, enabled him to carry himself in right royal fashion. During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of their insular situation. But he had saved himself by not becoming a mere pampered house-dog. Hunting and kindred outdoor delights had kept down the fat and hardened his muscles; and to him, as to the cold-tubbing races, the love of water had been a tonic and a health preserver.
And this was the manner of dog Buck was in the fall of 1897, when the Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen North. But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know that Manuel, one of the gardener’s helpers, was an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness—faith in a system; and this made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money, while the wages of a gardener’s helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and numerous progeny.
The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers’ Association, and the boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on the memorable night of Manuel’s treachery. No one saw him and Buck go off through the orchard on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the exception of a solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag station known as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and money chinked between them.
“You might wrap up the goods before you deliver ’m,” the stranger said gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck’s neck under the collar.
“Twist it, an’ you’ll choke ’m plentee,” said Manuel, and the stranger grunted a ready affirmative.
Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own. But when the ends of the rope were placed in the stranger’s hands, he growled menacingly. He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride believing that to intimate was to command. But to his surprise the rope tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage he sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by the throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never in all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into the baggage car.
The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting and that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance. The hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he was. He had travelled too often with the Judge not to know the sensation of riding in a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into them came the unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang for his throat, but Buck was too quick for him. His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they relax till his senses were choked out of him once more.
“Yep, has fits,” the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the baggageman, who had been attracted by the sounds of struggle. “I’m takin’ ’m up for the boss to ’Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks that he can cure ’m.”
Concerning that night’s ride, the man spoke most eloquently for himself, in a little shed, back of a saloon on the San Francisco water front.
“All I get is fifty for it,” he grumbled; “an’ I wouldn’t do it over for a thousand, cold cash.”
His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, and the right trouser leg was ripped from knee to ankle.
“How much did the other mug get?” the saloon-keeper demanded.
“A hundred,” was the reply. “Wouldn’t take a sou less, so help me.”
“That makes a hundred and fifty,” the saloon-keeper calculated; “and he’s worth it, or I’m a squarehead.”
The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and looked at his lacerated hand. “If I don’t get the hydrophoby—”
“It’ll be because you was born to hang,” laughed the saloon-keeper. “Here, lend me a hand before you pull your freight,” he added.
Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the life half throttled out of him, Buck attempted to face his tormentors. But he was thrown down and choked repeatedly, till they succeeded in filing the heavy brass collar from off his neck. Then the rope was removed, and he was flung into a cagelike crate.
There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, nursing his wrath and wounded pride. He could not understand what it all meant. What did they want with him, these strange men? Why were they keeping him pent up in this narrow crate? He did not know why, but he felt oppressed by the vague sense of impending calamity. Several times during the night he sprang to his feet when the shed door rattled open, expecting to see the Judge, or the boys at least. But each time it was the bulging face of the saloon-keeper that peered in at him by the sickly light of a tallow candle. And each time the joyful bark that trembled in Buck’s throat was twisted into a savage growl.
But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in the morning four men entered and picked up the crate. More tormentors, Buck decided, for they were evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he stormed and raged at them through the bars. They only laughed and poked sticks at him, which he promptly assailed with his teeth till he realized that that was what they wanted. Whereupon he lay down sullenly and allowed the crate to be lifted into a wagon. Then he, and the crate in which he was imprisoned, began a passage through many hands. Clerks in the express office took charge of him; he was carted about in another wagon; a truck carried him, with an assortment of boxes and parcels, upon a ferry steamer; he was trucked off the steamer into a great railway depot, and finally he was deposited in an express car.
For two days and nights this express car was dragged along at the tail of shrieking locomotives; and for two days and nights Buck neither ate nor drank. In his anger he had met the first advances of the express messengers with growls, and they had retaliated by teasing him. When he flung himself against the bars, quivering and frothing, they laughed at him and taunted him. They growled and barked like detestable dogs, mewed, and flapped their arms and crowed. It was all very silly, he knew; but therefore the more outrage to his dignity, and his anger waxed and waxed. He did not mind the hunger so much, but the lack of water caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever pitch. For that matter, high-strung and finely sensitive, the ill treatment had flung him into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his parched and swollen throat and tongue.
He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck. That had given them an unfair advantage; but now that it was off, he would show them. They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that he was resolved. For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank, and during those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned bloodshot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So changed was he that the Judge himself would not have recognized him; and the express messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him off the train at Seattle.
Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon into a small, high-walled back yard. A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged generously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver. That was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled himself savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet and a club.
“You ain’t going to take him out now?” the driver asked.
“Sure,” the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry.
There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had carried it in, and from safe perches on top the wall they prepared to watch the performance.
Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside, he was there on the inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to get out as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out.
“Now, you red-eyed devil,” he said, when he had made an opening sufficient for the passage of Buck’s body. At the same time he dropped the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand.
And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together for the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his bloodshot eyes. Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and forty pounds of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and nights. In mid air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he received a shock that checked his body and brought his teeth together with an agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his back and side. He had never been struck by a club in his life, and did not understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was again on his feet and launched into the air. And again the shock came and he was brought crushingly to the ground. This time he was aware that it was the club, but his madness knew no caution. A dozen times he charged, and as often the club broke the charge and smashed him down.
After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, too dazed to rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose and mouth and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver. Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful blow on the nose. All the pain he had endured was as nothing compared with the exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was almost lionlike in its ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. But the man, shifting the club from right to left, coolly caught him by the under jaw, at the same time wrenching downward and backward. Buck described a complete circle in the air, and half of another, then crashed to the ground on his head and chest.
For the last time he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow he had purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went down, knocked utterly senseless.
“He’s no slouch at dog-breakin’, that’s wot I say,” one of the men on the wall cried enthusiastically.
“Druther break cayuses any day, and twice on Sundays,” was the reply of the driver, as he climbed on the wagon and started the horses.
Buck’s senses came back to him, but not his strength. He lay where he had fallen, and from there he watched the man in the red sweater.
“ ‘Answers to the name of Buck,’ ” the man soliloquized, quoting from the saloon-keeper’s letter which had announced the consignment of the crate and contents. “Well, Buck, my boy,” he went on in a genial voice, “we’ve had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do is to let it go at that. You’ve learned your place, and I know mine. Be a good dog and all’ll go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and I’ll whale the stuffin’ outa you. Understand?”
As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he had so mercilessly pounded, and though Buck’s hair involuntarily bristled at touch of the hand, he endured it without protest. When the man brought him water he drank eagerly, and later bolted a generous meal of raw meat, chunk by chunk, from the man’s hand.
He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by, other dogs came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he watched them pass under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. Again and again, as he looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to Buck: a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails, and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery.
Now and again men came, strangers, who talked excitedly, wheedlingly, and in all kinds of fashions to the man in the red sweater. And at such times that money passed between them the strangers took one or more of the dogs away with them. Buck wondered where they went, for they never came back; but the fear of the future was strong upon him, and he was glad each time when he was not selected.
Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a little weazened man who spat broken English and many strange and uncouth exclamations which Buck could not understand.
“Sacredam!” he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. “Dat one dam bully dog! Eh? How moch?”
“Three hundred, and a present at that,” was the prompt reply of the man in the red sweater. “And seein’ it’s government money, you ain’t got no kick coming, eh, Perrault?”
Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been boomed skyward by the unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum for so fine an animal. The Canadian Government would be no loser, nor would its despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, and when he looked at Buck he knew that he was one in a thousand—“One in ten t’ousand,” he commented mentally.
Buck saw money pass between them, and was not surprised when Curly, a good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away by the little weazened man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater, and as Curly and he looked at receding Seattle from the deck of the Narwhal, it was the last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he were taken below by Perrault and turned over to a black-faced giant called François. Perrault was a French-Canadian, and swarthy; but François was a French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as swarthy. They were a new kind of men to Buck (of which he was destined to see many more), and while he developed no affection for them, he none the less grew honestly to respect them. He speedily learned that Perrault and François were fair men, calm and impartial in administering justice, and too wise in the way of dogs to be fooled by dogs.
In the ’tween-decks of the Narwhal, Buck and Curly joined two other dogs. One of them was a big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen who had been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later accompanied a Geological Survey into the Barrens.
He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way, smiling into one’s face the while he meditated some underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from Buck’s food at the first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of François’s whip sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing remained to Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair of François, he decided, and the half-breed began his rise in Buck’s estimation.
The other dog made no advances, nor received any; also, he did not attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy, morose fellow, and he showed Curly plainly that all he desired was to be left alone, and further, that there would be trouble if he were not left alone. “Dave” he was called, and he ate and slept, or yawned between times, and took interest in nothing, not even when the Narwhal crossed Queen Charlotte Sound and rolled and pitched and bucked like a thing possessed. When Buck and Curly grew excited, half wild with fear, he raised his head as though annoyed, favored them with an incurious glance, yawned, and went to sleep again.
Day and night the ship throbbed to the tireless pulse of the propeller, and though one day was very like another, it was apparent to Buck that the weather was steadily growing colder. At last, one morning, the propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded with an atmosphere of excitement. He felt it, as did the other dogs, and knew that a change was at hand. François leashed them and brought them on deck. At the first step upon the cold surface, Buck’s feet sank into a white mushy something very like mud. He sprang back with a snort. More of this white stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, but more of it fell upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his tongue. It bit like fire, and the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He tried it again, with the same result. The onlookers laughed uproariously, and he felt ashamed, he knew not why, for it was his first snow.
II
THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG
B
UCK’S first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare. Every hour was filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial. No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang.
He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish creatures fought, and his first experience taught him an unforgetable lesson. It is true, it was a vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it. Curly was the victim. They were camped near the log store, where she, in her friendly way, made advances to a husky dog the size of a full-grown wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no warning, only a leap in like a flash, a metallic clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and Curly’s face was ripped open from eye to jaw.
It was the wolf manner of fighting, to strike and leap away; but there was more to it than this. Thirty or forty huskies ran to the spot and surrounded the combatants in an intent and silent circle. Buck did not comprehend that silent intentness, nor the eager way with which they were licking their chops. Curly rushed her antagonist, who struck again and leaped aside. He met her next rush with his chest, in a peculiar fashion that tumbled her off her feet. She never regained them. This was
15
what the onlooking huskies had waited for. They closed in upon her, snarling and yelping, and she was buried, screaming with agony, beneath the bristling mass of bodies.
So sudden was it, and so unexpected, that Buck was taken aback. He saw Spitz run out his scarlet tongue in a way he had of laughing; and he saw François, swinging an axe, spring into the mess of dogs. Three men with clubs were helping him to scatter them. It did not take long. Two minutes from the time Curly went down, the last of her assailants were clubbed off. But she lay there limp and lifeless in the bloody, trampled snow, almost literally torn to pieces, the swart half-breed standing over her and cursing horribly. The scene often came back to Buck to trouble him in his sleep. So that was the way. No fairplay. Once down, that was the end of you. Well, he would see to it that he never went down. Spitz ran out his tongue and laughed again, and from that moment Buck hated him with a bitter and deathless hatred.
Before he had recovered from the shock caused by the tragic passing of Curly, he received another shock. François fastened upon him an arrangement of straps and buckles. It was a harness, such as he had seen the grooms put on the horses at home. And as he had seen horses work, so he was set to work, hauling François on a sled to the forest that fringed the valley, and returning with a load of firewood. Though his dignity was sorely hurt by thus being made a draught animal, he was too wise to rebel. He buckled down with a will and did his best, though it was all new and strange. François was stern, demanding instant obedience, and by virtue of his whip receiving instant obedience; while Dave, who was an experienced wheeler, nipped Buck’s hind quarters whenever he was in error. Spitz was the leader, likewise experienced, and while he could not always get at Buck, he growled sharp reproof now and again, or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk Buck into the way he should go. Buck learned easily, and under the combined tuition of his two mates and François made remarkable progress. Ere they returned to camp he knew enough to stop at “ho,” to go ahead at “mush,” to swing wide on the bends, and to keep clear of the wheeler when the loaded sled shot downhill at their heels.
“T’ree vair’ good dogs,” François told Perrault. “Dat Buck, heem pool lak hell. I tich heem queek as anyt’ing.”
By afternoon, Perrault, who was in a hurry to be on the trail with his despatches, returned with two more dogs. “Billee” and “Joe” he called them, two brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one mother though they were, they were as different as day and night. Billee’s one fault was his excessive good nature, while Joe was the very opposite, sour and introspective, with a perpetual snarl and a malignant eye. Buck received them in comradely fashion, Dave ignored them, while Spitz proceeded to thrash first one and then the other. Billee wagged his tail appeasingly, turned to run when he saw that appeasement was of no avail, and cried (still appeasingly) when Spitz’s sharp teeth scored his flank. But no matter how Spitz circled, Joe whirled around on his heels to face him, mane bristling, ears laid back, lips writhing and snarling, jaws clipping together as fast as he could snap, and eyes diabolically gleaming—the incarnation of belligerent fear. So terrible was his appearance that Spitz was forced to forego disciplining him; but to cover his own discomfiture he turned upon the inoffensive and wailing Billee and drove him to the confines of the camp.
By evening Perrault secured another dog, an old husky, long and lean and gaunt, with a battle-scarred face and a single eye which flashed a warning of prowess that commanded respect. He was called Sol-leks, which means the Angry One. Like Dave, he asked nothing, gave nothing, expected nothing; and when he marched slowly and deliberately into their midst, even Spitz left him alone. He had one peculiarity which Buck was unlucky enough to discover. He did not like to be approached on his blind side. Of this offence Buck was unwittingly guilty, and the first knowledge he had of his indiscretion was when Solleks whirled upon him and slashed his shoulder to the bone for three inches up and down. Forever after Buck avoided his blind side, and to the last of their comradeship had no more trouble. His only apparent ambition, like Dave’s, was to be left alone; though, as Buck was afterward to learn, each of them possessed one other and even more vital ambition.
That night Buck faced the great problem of sleeping. The tent, illumined by a candle, glowed warmly in the midst of the white plain; and when he, as a matter of course, entered it, both Perrault and François bombarded him with curses and cooking utensils, till he recovered from his consternation and fled ignominiously into the outer cold. A chill wind was blowing that nipped him sharply and bit with especial venom into his wounded shoulder. He lay down on the snow and attempted to sleep, but the frost soon drove him shivering to his feet. Miserable and disconsolate, he wandered about among the many tents, only to find that one place was as cold as another. Here and there savage dogs rushed upon him, but he bristled his neck hair and snarled (for he was learning fast), and they let him go his way unmolested.
Finally an idea came to him. He would return and see how his own team-mates were making out. To his astonishment, they had disappeared. Again he wandered about through the great camp, looking for them, and again he returned. Were they in the tent? No, that could not be, else he would not have been driven out. Then where could they possibly be? With drooping tail and shivering body, very forlorn indeed, he aimlessly circled the tent. Suddenly the snow gave way beneath his fore legs and he sank down. Something wriggled under his feet. He sprang back, bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown. But a friendly little yelp reassured him, and he went back to investigate. A whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, and there, curled up under the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined placatingly, squirmed and wriggled to show his good will and intentions, and even ventured, as a bribe for peace, to lick Buck’s face with his warm wet tongue.
Another lesson. So that was the way they did it, eh? Buck confidently selected a spot, and with much fuss and waste effort proceeded to dig a hole for himself. In a trice the heat from his body filled the confined space and he was asleep. The day had been long and arduous, and he slept soundly and comfortably, though he growled and barked and wrestled with bad dreams.
Nor did he open his eyes till roused by the noises of the waking camp. At first he did not know where he was. It had snowed during the night and he was completely buried. The snow walls pressed him on every side, and a great surge of fear swept through him—the fear of the wild thing for the trap. It was a token that he was harking back through his own life to the lives of his forebears; for he was a civilized dog, an unduly civilized dog, and of his own experience knew no trap and so could not of himself fear it. The muscles of his whole body contracted spasmodically and instinctively, the hair on his neck and shoulders stood on end, and with a ferocious snarl he bounded straight up into the blinding day, the snow flying about him in a flashing cloud. Ere he landed on his feet, he saw the white camp spread out before him and knew where he was and remembered all that had passed from the time he went for a stroll with Manuel to the hole he had dug for himself the night before.
A shout from François hailed his appearance. “Wot I say?” the dogdriver cried to Perrault. “Dat Buck for sure learn queek as anyt’ing.”
Perrault nodded gravely. As courier for the Canadian Government, bearing important despatches, he was anxious to secure the best dogs, and he was particularly gladdened by the possession of Buck.
Three more huskies were added to the team inside an hour, making a total of nine, and before another quarter of an hour had passed they were in harness and swinging up the trail toward the Dyea Cañon. Buck was glad to be gone, and though the work was hard he found he did not particularly despise it. He was surprised at the eagerness which animated the whole team, and which was communicated to him; but still more surprising was the change wrought in Dave and Sol-leks. They were new dogs, utterly transformed by the harness. All passiveness and unconcern had dropped from them. They were alert and active, anxious that the work should go well, and fiercely irritable with whatever, by delay or confusion, retarded that work. The toil of the traces seemed the supreme expression of their being, and all that they lived for and the only thing in which they took delight.
Dave was wheeler or sled dog, pulling in front of him was Buck, then came Sol-leks; the rest of the team was strung out ahead, single file, to the leader, which position was filled by Spitz.
Buck had been purposely placed between Dave and Sol-leks so that he might receive instruction. Apt scholar that he was, they were equally apt teachers, never allowing him to linger long in error, and enforcing their teaching with their sharp teeth. Dave was fair and very wise. He never nipped Buck without cause, and he never failed to nip him when he stood in need of it. As François’s whip backed him up, Buck found it to be cheaper to mend his ways than to retaliate. Once, during a brief halt, when he got tangled in the traces and delayed the start, both Dave and Sol-leks flew at him and administered a sound trouncing. The resulting tangle was even worse, but Buck took good care to keep the traces clear thereafter; and ere the day was done, so well had he mastered his work, his mates about ceased nagging him. François’s whip snapped less frequently, and Perrault even honored Buck by lifting up his feet and carefully examining them.
It was a hard day’s run, up the Cañon, through Sheep Camp, past the Scales and the timber line, across glaciers and snowdrifts hundreds of feet deep, and over the great Chilcoot Divide, which stands between the salt water and the fresh and guards forbiddingly the sad and lonely North. They made good time down the chain of lakes which fills the craters of extinct volcanoes, and late that night pulled into the huge camp at the head of Lake Bennett, where thousands of gold-seekers were building boats against the breakup of the ice in the spring. Buck made his hole in the snow and slept the sleep of the exhausted just, but all too early was routed out in the cold darkness and harnessed with his mates to the sled.
That day they made forty miles, the trail being packed; but the next day, and for many days to follow, they broke their own trail, worked harder, and made poorer time. As a rule, Perrault travelled ahead of the team, packing the snow with webbed shoes to make it easier for them. François, guiding the sled at the gee-pole, sometimes exchanged places with him, but not often. Perrault was in a hurry, and he prided himself on his knowledge of ice, which knowledge was indispensable, for the fall ice was very thin, and where there was swift water, there was no ice at all.
Day after day, for days unending, Buck toiled in the traces. Always, they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawn found them hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off behind them. And always they pitched camp after dark, eating their bit of fish, and crawling to sleep into the snow. Buck was ravenous. The pound and a half of sun-dried salmon, which was his ration for each day, seemed to go nowhere. He never had enough, and suffered from perpetual hunger pangs. Yet the other dogs, because they weighed less and were born to the life, received a pound only of the fish and managed to keep in good condition.
He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old life. A dainty eater, he found that his mates, finishing first, robbed him of his unfinished ration. There was no defending it. While he was fighting off two or three, it was disappearing down the throats of the others. To remedy this, he ate as fast as they; and, so greatly did hunger compel him, he was not above taking what did not belong to him. He watched and learned. When he saw Pike, one of the new dogs, a clever malingerer and thief, slyly steal a slice of bacon when Perrault’s back was turned, he duplicated the performance the following day, getting away with the whole chunk. A great uproar was raised, but he was unsuspected; while Dub, an awkward blunderer who was always getting caught, was punished for Buck’s misdeed.
This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. It was all well enough in the Southland, under the law of love and fellowship, to respect private property and personal feelings; but in the Northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such things into account was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he would fail to prosper.
Not that Buck reasoned it out. He was fit, that was all, and unconsciously he accommodated himself to the new mode of life. All his days, no matter what the odds, he had never run from a fight. But the club of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a more fundamental and primitive code. Civilized, he could have died for a moral consideration, say the defence of Judge Miller’s riding-whip; but the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability to flee from the defence of a moral consideration and so save his hide. He did not steal for joy of it, but because of the clamor of his stomach. He did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of respect for club and fang. In short, the things he did were done because it was easier to do them than not to do them.
His development (or retrogression) was rapid. His muscles became hard as iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He achieved an internal as well as external economy. He could eat anything, no matter how loathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach extracted the last least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and stoutest of tissues. Sight and scent became remarkably keen, while his hearing developed such acuteness that in his sleep he heard the faintest sound and knew whether it heralded peace or peril. He learned to bite the ice out with his teeth when it collected between his toes; and when he was thirsty and there was a thick scum of ice over the water hole, he would break it by rearing and striking it with stiff fore legs. His most conspicuous trait was an ability to scent the wind and forecast it a night in advance. No matter how breathless the air when he dug his nest by tree or bank, the wind that later blew inevitably found him to leeward, sheltered and snug.
And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down. It was no task for him to learn to fight with cut and slash and the quick wolf snap. In this manner had fought forgotten ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, and the old tricks which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been his always. And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf-like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and dark.
Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life is, the ancient song surged through him and he came into his own again; and he came because men had found a yellow metal in the North, and because Manuel was a gardener’s helper whose wages did not lap over the needs of his wife and divers small copies of himself.
III
THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST
T
HE dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce conditions of trail life it grew and grew. Yet it was a secret growth. His new-born cunning gave him poise and control. He was too busy adjusting himself to the new life to feel at ease, and not only did he not pick fights, but he avoided them whenever possible. A certain deliberateness characterized his attitude. He was not prone to rashness and precipitate action; and in the bitter hatred between him and Spitz he betrayed no impatience, shunned all offensive acts.
On the other hand, possibly because he divined in Buck a dangerous rival, Spitz never lost an opportunity of showing his teeth. He even went out of his way to bully Buck, striving constantly to start the fight which could end only in the death of one or the other.
Early in the trip this might have taken place had it not been for an unwonted accident. At the end of this day they made a bleak and miserable camp on the shore of Lake Le Barge. Driving snow, a wind that cut like a white-hot knife, and darkness had forced them to grope for a camping place. They could hardly have fared worse. At their backs rose a perpendicular wall of rock, and Perrault and François were compelled to make their fire and spread their sleeping robes on the ice of the lake itself. The tent they had discarded at Dyea in order to travel light. A few sticks of driftwood furnished them with a fire that thawed down through the ice and left them to eat supper in the dark.
Close in under the sheltering rock Buck made his nest. So snug and warm was it, that he was loath to leave it when François distributed the
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fish which he had first thawed over the fire. But when Buck finished his ration and returned, he found his nest occupied. A warning snarl told him that the trespasser was Spitz. Till now Buck had avoided trouble with his enemy, but this was too much. The beast in him roared. He sprang upon Spitz with a fury which surprised them both, and Spitz particularly, for his whole experience with Buck had gone to teach him that his rival was an unusually timid dog, who managed to hold his own only because of his great weight and size.
François was surprised, too, when they shot out in a tangle from the disrupted nest and he divined the cause of the trouble. “A-a-ah!” he cried to Buck. “Gif it to heem, by Gar! Gif it to heem, the dirty t’eef!”
Spitz was equally willing. He was crying with sheer rage and eagerness as he circled back and forth for a chance to spring in. Buck was no less eager, and no less cautious, as he likewise circled back and forth for the advantage. But it was then that the unexpected happened, the thing which projected their struggle for supremacy far into the future, past many a weary mile of trail and toil.
An oath from Perrault, the resounding impact of a club upon a bony frame, and a shrill yelp of pain, heralded the breaking forth of pandemonium. The camp was suddenly discovered to be alive with skulking furry forms—starving huskies, four or five score of them, who had scented the camp from some Indian village. They had crept in while Buck and Spitz were fighting, and when the two men sprang among them with stout clubs they showed their teeth and fought back. They were crazed by the smell of the food. Perrault found one with head buried in the grub-box. His club landed heavily on the gaunt ribs, and the grub-box was capsized on the ground. On the instant a score of the famished brutes were scrambling for the bread and bacon. The clubs fell upon them unheeded. They yelped and howled under the rain of blows, but struggled none the less madly till the last crumb had been devoured.
In the meantime the astonished team-dogs had burst out of their nests only to be set upon by the fierce invaders. Never had Buck seen such dogs. It seemed as though their bones would burst through their skins. They were mere skeletons, draped loosely in draggled hides, with blazing eyes and slavered fangs. But the hunger-madness made them terrifying, irresistible. There was no opposing them. The team-dogs were swept back against the cliff at the first onset. Buck was beset by three huskies, and in a trice his head and shoulders were ripped and slashed. The din was frightful. Billee was crying as usual. Dave and Sol-leks, dripping blood from a score of wounds, were fighting bravely side by side. Joe was snapping like a demon. Once his teeth closed on the fore leg of a husky, and he crunched down through the bone. Pike, the malingerer, leaped upon the crippled animal, breaking its neck with a quick flash of teeth and a jerk, Buck got a frothing adversary by the throat, and was sprayed with blood when his teeth sank through the jugular. The warm taste of it in his mouth goaded him to greater fierceness. He flung himself upon another, and at the same time felt teeth sink into his own throat. It was Spitz, treacherously attacking from the side.
Perrault and François, having cleaned out their part of the camp, hurried to save their sled-dogs. The wild wave of famished beasts rolled back before them, and Buck shook himself free. But it was only for a moment. The two men were compelled to run back to save the grub, upon which the huskies returned to the attack on the team. Billee, terrified into bravery, sprang through the savage circle and fled away over the ice. Pike and Dub followed on his heels, with the rest of the team behind. As Buck drew himself together to spring after them, out of the tail of his eye he saw Spitz rush upon him with the evident intention of overthrowing him. Once off his feet and under that mass of huskies, there was no hope for him. But he braced himself to the shock of Spitz’s charge, then joined the flight out on the lake.
Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together and sought shelter in the forest. Though unpursued, they were in a sorry plight. There was not one who was not wounded in four or five places, while some were wounded grievously. Dub was badly injured in a hind leg; Dolly, the last husky added to the team at Dyea, had a badly torn throat; Joe had lost an eye; while Billee, the good-natured, with an ear chewed and rent to ribbons, cried and whimpered throughout the night. At daybreak they limped warily back to camp, to find the marauders gone and the two men in bad tempers. Fully half their grub supply was gone. The huskies had chewed through the sled lashings and canvas coverings. In fact, nothing, no matter how remotely eatable, had escaped them. They had eaten a pair of Perrault’s moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the leather traces, and even two feet of lash from the end of François’s whip. He broke from a mournful contemplation of it to look over his wounded dogs.
“Ah, my frien’s,” he said softly, “mebbe it mek you mad dog, dose many bites. Mebbe all mad dog, sacredam! Wot you t’ink, eh, Perrault?”
The courier shook his head dubiously. With four hundred miles of trail still between him and Dawson, he could ill afford to have madness break out among his dogs. Two hours of cursing and exertion got the harnesses into shape, and the wound-stiffened team was under way, struggling painfully over the hardest part of the trail they had yet encountered, and for that matter, the hardest between them and Dawson.
The Thirty Mile River was wide open. Its wild water defied the frost, and it was in the eddies only and in the quiet places that the ice held at all. Six days of exhausting toil were required to cover those thirty terrible miles. And terrible they were, for every foot of them was accomplished at the risk of life to dog and man. A dozen times, Perrault, nosing the way, broke through the ice bridges, being saved by the long pole he carried, which he so held that it fell each time across the hole made by his body. But a cold snap was on, the thermometer registering fifty below zero, and each time he broke through he was compelled for very life to build a fire and dry his garments.
Nothing daunted him. It was because nothing daunted him that he had been chosen for government courier. He took all manner of risks, resolutely thrusting his little weazened face into the frost and struggling on from dim dawn to dark. He skirted the frowning shores on rim ice that bent and crackled under foot and upon which they dared not halt. Once, the sled broke through, with Dave and Buck, and they were halffrozen and all but drowned by the time they were dragged out. The usual fire was necessary to save them. They were coated solidly with ice, and the two men kept them on the run around the fire, sweating and thawing, so close that they were singed by the flames.
At another time Spitz went through, dragging the whole team after him up to Buck, who strained backward with all his strength, his fore paws on the slippery edge and the ice quivering and snapping all around. But behind him was Dave, likewise straining backward, and behind the sled was François, pulling till his tendons cracked.
Again, the rim ice broke away before and behind, and there was no escape except up the cliff. Perrault scaled it by a miracle, while François prayed for just that miracle; and with every thong and sled lashing and the last bit of harness rove into a long rope, the dogs were hoisted, one by one, to the cliff crest. François came up last, after the sled and load. Then came the search for a place to descend, which descent was ultimately made by the aid of the rope, and night found them back on the river with a quarter of a mile to the day’s credit.
By the time they made the Hootalinqua and good ice, Buck was played out. The rest of the dogs were in like condition; but Perrault, to make up lost time, pushed them late and early. The first day they covered thirty-five miles to the Big Salmon; the next day thirty-five more to the Little Salmon; the third day forty miles, which brought them well up toward the Five Fingers.
Buck’s feet were not so compact and hard as the feet of the huskies. His had softened during the many generations since the day his last wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller or river man. All day long he limped in agony, and camp once made, lay down like a dead dog. Hungry as he was, he would not move to receive his ration of fish, which François had to bring to him. Also, the dog-driver rubbed Buck’s feet for half an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins to make four moccasins for Buck. This was a great relief, and Buck caused even the weazened face of Perrault to twist itself into a grin one morning, when François forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused to budge without them. Later his feet grew hard to the trail, and the worn-out foot-gear was thrown away.
At the Pelly one morning, as they were harnessing up, Dolly, who had never been conspicuous for anything, went suddenly mad. She announced her condition by a long, heart-breaking wolf howl that sent every dog bristling with fear, then sprang straight for Buck. He had never seen a dog go mad, nor did he have any reason to fear madness; yet he knew that here was horror, and fled away from it in a panic. Straight away he raced, with Dolly, panting and frothing, one leap behind; nor could she gain on him, so great was his terror, nor could he leave her, so great was her madness. He plunged through the wooded breast of the island, flew down to the lower end, crossed a back channel filled with rough ice to another island, gained a third island, curved back to the main river, and in desperation started to cross it. And all the time, though he did not look, he could hear her snarling just one leap behind. François called to him a quarter of a mile away and he doubled back, still one leap ahead, gasping painfully for air and putting all his faith in that François would save him. The dog-driver held the axe poised in his hand, and as Buck shot past him the axe crashed down upon mad Dolly’s head.
Buck staggered over against the sled, exhausted, sobbing for breath, helpless. This was Spitz’s opportunity. He sprang upon Buck, and twice his teeth sank into his unresisting foe and ripped and tore the flesh to the bone. Then François’s lash descended, and Buck had the satisfaction of watching Spitz receive the worst whipping as yet administered to any of the team.
“One devil, dat Spitz,” remarked Perrault. “Some dam day heem keel dat Buck.”
“Dat Buck two devils,” was François’s rejoinder. “All de tam I watch dat Buck I know for sure. Lissen: some dam fine day heem get mad lak hell an’ den heem chew dat Spitz all up an’ spit heem out on de snow. Sure. I know.”
From then on it was war between them. Spitz, as lead-dog and acknowledged master of the team, felt his supremacy threatened by this strange Southland dog. And strange Buck was to him, for of the many Southland dogs he had known, not one had shown up worthily in camp and on trail. They were all too soft, dying under the toil, the frost, and starvation. Buck was the exception. He alone endured and prospered, matching the husky in strength, savagery, and cunning. Then he was a masterful dog, and what made him dangerous was the fact that the club of the man in the red sweater had knocked all blind pluck and rashness out of his desire for mastery. He was preëminently cunning, and could bide his time with a patience that was nothing less than primitive.
It was inevitable that the clash for leadership should come. Buck wanted it. He wanted it because it was his nature, because he had been gripped tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of the trail and trace—that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which lures them to die joyfully in the harness, and breaks their hearts if they are cut out of the harness. This was the pride of Dave as wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with all his strength; the pride that laid hold of them at break of camp, transforming them from sour and sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious creatures; the pride that spurred them on all day and dropped them at pitch of camp at night, letting them fall back into gloomy unrest and uncontent. This was the pride that bore up Spitz and made him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered and shirked in the traces or hid away at harness-up time in the morning. Likewise it was this pride that made him fear Buck as a possible lead-dog. And this was Buck’s pride, too.
He openly threatened the other’s leadership. He came between him and the shirks he should have punished. And he did it deliberately. One night there was a heavy snowfall, and in the morning Pike, the malingerer, did not appear. He was securely hidden in his nest under a foot of snow. François called him and sought him in vain. Spitz was wild with wrath. He raged through the camp, smelling and digging in every likely place, snarling so frightfully that Pike heard and shivered in his hiding-place.
But when he was at last unearthed, and Spitz flew at him to punish him, Buck flew, with equal rage, in between. So unexpected was it, and so shrewdly managed, that Spitz was hurled backward and off his feet. Pike, who had been trembling abjectly, took heart at this open mutiny, and sprang upon his overthrown leader. Buck, to whom fairplay was a forgotten code, likewise sprang upon Spitz. But François, chuckling at the incident while unswerving in the administration of justice, brought his lash down upon Buck with all his might. This failed to drive Buck from his prostrate rival, and the butt of the whip was brought into play. Half-stunned by the blow, Buck was knocked backward and the lash laid upon him again and again, while Spitz soundly punished the many times offending Pike.
In the days that followed, as Dawson grew closer and closer, Buck still continued to interfere between Spitz and the culprits; but he did it craftily, when François was not around, With the covert mutiny of Buck, a general insubordination sprang up and increased. Dave and Sol-leks were unaffected, but the rest of the team went from bad to worse. Things no longer went right. There was continual bickering and jangling. Trouble was always afoot, and at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept François busy, for the dog-driver was in constant apprehension of the life-and-death struggle between the two which he knew must take place sooner or later; and on more than one night the sounds of quarrelling and strife among the other dogs turned him out of his sleeping robe, fearful that Buck and Spitz were at it.
But the opportunity did not present itself, and they pulled into Dawson one dreary afternoon with the great fight still to come. Here were many men, and countless dogs, and Buck found them all at work. It seemed the ordained order of things that dogs should work. All day they swung up and down the main street in long teams, and in the night their jingling bells still went by. They hauled cabin logs and firewood, freighted up to the mines, and did all manner of work that horses did in the Santa Clara Valley. Here and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, regularly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant, in which it was Buck’s delight to join.
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself—one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages.
Seven days from the time they pulled into Dawson, they dropped down the steep bank by the Barracks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled for Dyea and Salt Water. Perrault was carrying despatches if anything more urgent than those he had brought in; also, the travel pride had gripped him, and he purposed to make the record trip of the year. Several things favored him in this. The week’s rest had recuperated the dogs and put them in thorough trim. The trail they had broken into the country was packed hard by later journeyers. And further, the police had arranged in two or three places deposits of grub for dog and man, and he was travelling light.
They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile run, on the first day; and the second day saw them booming up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly. But such splendid running was achieved not without great trouble and vexation on the part of François. The insidious revolt led by Buck had destroyed the solidarity of the team. It no longer was as one dog leaping in the traces. The encouragement Buck gave the rebels led them into all kinds of petty misdemeanors. No more was Spitz a leader greatly to be feared. The old awe departed, and they grew equal to challenging his authority. Pike robbed him of half a fish one night, and gulped it down under the protection of Buck. Another night Dub and Joe fought Spitz and made him forego the punishment they deserved. And even Billee, the good-natured, was less good-natured, and whined not half so placatingly as in former days. Buck never came near Spitz without snarling and bristling menacingly. In fact, his conduct approached that of a bully, and he was given to swaggering up and down before Spitz’s very nose.
The breaking down of discipline likewise affected the dogs in their relations with one another. They quarrelled and bickered more than ever among themselves, till at times the camp was a howling bedlam. Dave and Sol-leks alone were unaltered, though they were made irritable by the unending squabbling. François swore strange barbarous oaths, and stamped the snow in futile rage, and tore his hair. His lash was always singing among the dogs, but it was of small avail. Directly his back was turned they were at it again. He backed up Spitz with his whip, while Buck backed up the remainder of the team. François knew he was behind all the trouble, and Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever ever again to be caught red-handed. He worked faithfully in the harness, for the toil had become a delight to him; yet it was a greater delight slyly to precipitate a fight amongst his mates and tangle the traces.
At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after supper, Dub turned up a snowshoe rabbit, blundered it, and missed. In a second the whole team was in full cry. A hundred yards away was a camp of the Northwest Police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who joined the chase. The rabbit sped down the river, turned off into a small creek, up the frozen bed of which it held steadily. It ran lightly on the surface of the snow, while the dogs ploughed through by main strength. Buck led the pack, sixty strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He lay down low to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.
All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill—all this was Buck’s, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood.
There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.
But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his supreme moods, left the pack and cut across a narrow neck of land where the creek made a long bend around. Buck did not know of this, and as he rounded the bend, the frost wraith of a rabbit still flitting before him, he saw another and larger frost wraith leap from the overhanging bank into the immediate path of the rabbit. It was Spitz. The rabbit could not turn, and as the white teeth broke its back in mid air it shrieked as loudly as a stricken man may shriek. At sound of this, the cry of Life plunging down from Life’s apex in the grip of Death, the full pack at Buck’s heels raised a hell’s chorus of delight.
Buck did not cry out. He did not check himself, but drove in upon Spitz, shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat. They rolled over and over in the powdery snow. Spitz gained his feet almost as though he had not been overthrown, slashing Buck down the shoulder and leaping clear. Twice his teeth clipped together, like the steel jaws of a trap, as he backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting lips that writhed and snarled.
In a flash Buck knew it. The time had come. It was to the death. As they circled about, snarling, ears laid back, keenly watchful for the advantage, the scene came to Buck with a sense of familiarity. He seemed to remember it all,—the white woods, and earth, and moonlight, and the thrill of battle. Over the whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly calm. There was not the faintest whisper of air—nothing moved, not a leaf quivered, the visible breaths of the dogs rising slowly and lingering in the frosty air. They had made short work of the snowshoe rabbit, these dogs that were ill-tamed wolves; and they were now drawn up in an expectant circle. They, too, were silent, their eyes only gleaming and their breaths drifting slowly upward. To Buck it was nothing new or strange, this scene of old time. It was as though it had always been, the wonted way of things.
Spitz was a practised fighter. From Spitzbergen through the Arctic, and across Canada and the Barrens, he had held his own with all manner of dogs and achieved to mastery over them. Bitter rage was his, but never blind rage. In passion to rend and destroy, he never forgot that his enemy was in like passion to rend and destroy. He never rushed till he was prepared to receive a rush; never attacked till he had first defended that attack.
In vain Buck strove to sink his teeth in the neck of the big white dog. Wherever his fangs struck for the softer flesh, they were countered by the fangs of Spitz. Fang clashed fang, and lips were cut and bleeding, but Buck could not penetrate his enemy’s guard. Then he warmed up and enveloped Spitz in a whirlwind of rushes. Time and time again he tried for the snow-white throat, where life bubbled near to the surface, and each time and every time Spitz slashed him and got away. Then Buck took to rushing, as though for the throat, when, suddenly drawing back his head and curving in from the side, he would drive his shoulder at the shoulder of Spitz, as a ram by which to overthrow him. But instead, Buck’s shoulder was slashed down each time as Spitz leaped lightly away.
Spitz was untouched, while Buck was streaming with blood and panting hard. The fight was growing desperate. And all the while the silent and wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever dog went down. As Buck grew winded, Spitz took to rushing, and he kept him staggering for footing. Once Buck went over, and the whole circle of sixty dogs started up; but he recovered himself, almost in mid air, and the circle sank down again and waited.
But Buck possessed a quality that made for greatness—imagination. He fought by instinct, but he could fight by head as well. He rushed, as though attempting the old shoulder trick, but at the last instant swept low to the snow and in. His teeth closed on Spitz’s left fore leg. There was a crunch of breaking bone, and the white dog faced him on three legs. Thrice he tried to knock him over, then repeated the trick and broke the right fore leg. Despite the pain and helplessness, Spitz struggled madly to keep up. He saw the silent circle, with gleaming eyes, lolling tongues, and silvery breaths drifting upward, closing in upon him as he had seen similar circles close in upon beaten antagonists in the past. Only this time he was the one who was beaten.
There was no hope for him. Buck was inexorable. Mercy was a thing reserved for gentler climes. He manœuvred for the final rush. The circle had tightened till he could feel the breaths of the huskies on his flanks. He could see them, beyond Spitz and to either side, half crouching for the spring, their eyes fixed upon him. A pause seemed to fall. Every animal was motionless as though turned to stone. Only Spitz quivered and bristled as he staggered back and forth, snarling with horrible menace, as though to frighten off impending death. Then Buck sprang in and out; but while he was in, shoulder had at last squarely met shoulder. The dark circle became a dot on the moon-flooded snow as Spitz disappeared from view. Buck stood and looked on, the successful champion, the dominant primordial beast who had made his kill and found it good.
IV
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP
“ H? Wot I say? I spik true w’en I say dat Buck two devils.”
This was François’s speech next morning when he discovered Spitz missing and Buck covered with wounds. He
drew him to the fire and by its light pointed them out.
“Dat Spitz fight lak hell,” said Perrault, as he surveyed the gaping rips and cuts.
“An’ dat Buck fight lak two hells,” was François’s answer. “An’ now we make good time. No more Spitz, no more trouble, sure.”
While Perrault packed the camp outfit and loaded the sled, the dogdriver proceeded to harness the dogs. Buck trotted up to the place Spitz would have occupied as leader; but François, not noticing him, brought Sol-leks to the coveted position. In his judgment, Sol-leks was the best lead-dog left. Buck sprang upon Sol-leks in a fury, driving him back and standing in his place.
“Eh? eh?” François cried, slapping his thighs gleefully. “Look at dat
Buck. Heem keel dat Spitz, heem t’ink to take de job.” “Go ’way, Chook!” he cried, but Buck refused to budge.
He took Buck by the scruff of the neck, and though the dog growled threateningly, dragged him to one side and replaced Sol-leks. The old dog did not like it, and showed plainly that he was afraid of Buck. François was obdurate, but when he turned his back Buck again displaced Sol-leks, who was not at all unwilling to go.
François was angry. “Now, by Gar, I feex you!” he cried, coming back with a heavy club in his hand.
37
Buck remembered the man in the red sweater, and retreated slowly; nor did he attempt to charge in when Sol-leks was once more brought forward. But he circled just beyond the range of the club, snarling with bitterness and rage; and while he circled he watched the club so as to dodge it if thrown by François, for he was become wise in the way of clubs.
The driver went about his work, and he called to Buck when he was ready to put him in his old place in front of Dave. Buck retreated two or three steps. François followed him up, whereupon he again retreated. After some time of this, François threw down the club, thinking that Buck feared a thrashing. But Buck was in open revolt. He wanted, not to escape a clubbing, but to have the leadership. It was his by right. He had earned it, and he would not be content with less.
Perrault took a hand. Between them they ran him about for the better part of an hour. They threw clubs at him. He dodged. They cursed him, and his fathers and mothers before him, and all his seed to come after him down to the remotest generation, and every hair on his body and drop of blood in his veins; and he answered curse with snarl and kept out of their reach. He did not try to run away, but retreated around and around the camp, advertising plainly that when his desire was met, he would come in and be good.
François sat down and scratched his head. Perrault looked at his watch and swore. Time was flying, and they should have been on the trail an hour gone. François scratched his head again. He shook it and grinned sheepishly at the courier, who shrugged his shoulders in sign that they were beaten. Then François went up to where Sol-leks stood and called to Buck. Buck laughed, as dogs laugh, yet kept his distance. François unfastened Sol-leks’s traces and put him back in his old place. The team stood harnessed to the sled in an unbroken line, ready for the trail. There was no place for Buck save at the front. Once more François called, and once more Buck laughed and kept away.
“T’row down de club,” Perrault commanded.
François complied, whereupon Buck trotted in, laughing triumphantly, and swung around into position at the head of the team.
His traces were fastened, the sled broken out, and with both men running they dashed out on to the river trail.
Highly as the dog-driver had forevalued Buck, with his two devils, he found, while the day was yet young, that he had undervalued. At a bound Buck took up the duties of leadership; and where judgment was required, and quick thinking and quick acting, he showed himself the superior even of Spitz, of whom François had never seen an equal.
But it was in giving the law and making his mates live up to it, that Buck excelled. Dave and Sol-leks did not mind the change in leadership. It was none of their business. Their business was to toil, and toil mightily, in the traces. So long as that were not interfered with, they did not care what happened. Billee, the good-natured, could lead for all they cared, so long as he kept order. The rest of the team, however, had grown unruly during the last days of Spitz, and their surprise was great now that Buck proceeded to lick them into shape.
Pike, who pulled at Buck’s heels, and who never put an ounce more of his weight against the breast-band than he was compelled to do, was swiftly and repeatedly shaken for loafing; and ere the first day was done he was pulling more than ever before in his life. The first night in camp, Joe, the sour one, was punished roundly—a thing that Spitz had never succeeded in doing. Buck simply smothered him by virtue of superior weight, and cut him up till he ceased snapping and began to whine for mercy.
The general tone of the team picked up immediately. It recovered its old-time solidarity, and once more the dogs leaped as one dog in the traces. At the Rink Rapids two native huskies, Teek and Koona, were added; and the celerity with which Buck broke them in took away François’s breath.
“Nevaire such a dog as dat Buck!” he cried. “No, nevaire! Heem worth one t’ousan’ dollair, by Gar! Eh? Wot you say, Perrault?”
And Perrault nodded. He was ahead of the record then, and gaining day by day. The trail was in excellent condition, well packed and hard, and there was no new-fallen snow with which to contend. It was not too cold. The temperature dropped to fifty below zero and remained there the whole trip. The men rode and ran by turn, and the dogs were kept on the jump, with but infrequent stoppages.
The Thirty Mile River was comparatively coated with ice, and they covered in one day going out what had taken them ten days coming in. In one run they made a sixty-mile dash from the foot of Lake Le Barge to the White Horse Rapids. Across Marsh, Tagish, and Bennett (seventy miles of lakes), they flew so fast that the man whose turn it was to run towed behind the sled at the end of a rope. And on the last night of the second week they topped White Pass and dropped down the sea slope with the lights of Skaguay and of the shipping at their feet.
It was a record run. Each day for fourteen days they had averaged forty miles. For three days Perrault and François threw chests up and down the main street of Skaguay and were deluged with invitations to drink, while the team was the constant centre of a worshipful crowd of dog-busters and mushers. Then three or four western bad men aspired to clean out the town, were riddled like pepper-boxes for their pains, and public interest turned to other idols. Next came official orders. François called Buck to him, threw his arms around him, wept over him. And that was the last of François and Perrault. Like other men, they passed out of Buck’s life for good.
A Scotch half-breed took charge of him and his mates, and in company with a dozen other dog-teams he started back over the weary trail to Dawson. It was no light running now, nor record time, but heavy toil each day, with a heavy load behind; for this was the mail train, carrying word from the world to the men who sought gold under the shadow of the Pole.
Buck did not like it, but he bore up well to the work, taking pride in it after the manner of Dave and Sol-leks, and seeing that his mates, whether they prided in it or not, did their fair share. It was a monotonous life, operating with machine-like regularity. One day was very like another. At a certain time each morning the cooks turned out, fires were built, and breakfast was eaten. Then, while some broke camp, others harnessed the dogs, and they were under way an hour or so before the darkness fell which gave warning of dawn. At night, camp was made. Some pitched the flies, others cut firewood and pine boughs for the beds, and still others carried water or ice for the cooks. Also, the dogs were fed. To them, this was the one feature of the day, though it was good to loaf around, after the fish was eaten, for an hour or so with the other dogs, of which there were fivescore and odd. There were fierce fighters among them, but three battles with the fiercest brought Buck to mastery, so that when he bristled and showed his teeth, they got out of his way.
Best of all, perhaps, he loved to lie near the fire, hind legs crouched under him, fore legs stretched out in front, head raised, and eyes blinking dreamily at the flames. Sometimes he thought of Judge Miller’s big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, and of the cement swimming-tank, and Ysabel, the Mexican hairless, and Toots, the Japanese pug; but oftener he remembered the man in the red sweater, the death of Curly, the great fight with Spitz, and the good things he had eaten or would like to eat. He was not homesick. The Sunland was very dim and distant, and such memories had no power over him. Far more potent were the memories of his heredity that gave things he had never seen before a seeming familiarity; the instincts (which were but the memories of his ancestors become habits) which had lapsed in later days, and still later, in him, quickened and became alive again.
Sometimes as he crouched there, blinking dreamily at the flames, it seemed that the flames were of another fire, and that as he crouched by this other fire he saw another and different man from the half-breed cook before him. This other man was shorter of leg and longer of arm, with muscles that were stringy and knotty rather than rounded and swelling. The hair of this man was long and matted, and his head slanted back under it from the eyes. He uttered strange sounds, and seemed very much afraid of the darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching in his hand, which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick with a heavy stone made fast to the end. He was all but naked, a ragged and fire-scorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body there was much hair. In some places, across the chest and shoulders and down the outside of the arms and thighs, it was matted into almost a thick fur. He did not stand erect, but with trunk inclined forward from the hips, on legs that bent at the knees. About his body there was a peculiar springiness, or resiliency, almost catlike, and a quick alertness as of one who lived in perpetual fear of things seen and unseen.
At other times this hairy man squatted by the fire with head between his legs and slept. On such occasions his elbows were on his knees, his hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms. And beyond that fire, in the circling darkness, Buck could see many gleaming coals, two by two, always two by two, which he knew to be the eyes of great beasts of prey. And he could hear the crashing of their bodies through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night. And dreaming there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the fire, these sounds and sights of another world would make the hair to rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders and up his neck, till he whimpered low and suppressedly, or growled softly, and the half-breed cook shouted at him, “Hey, you Buck, wake up!” Whereupon the other world would vanish and the real world come into his eyes, and he would get up and yawn and stretch as though he had been asleep.
It was a hard trip, with the mail behind them, and the heavy work wore them down. They were short of weight and in poor condition when they made Dawson, and should have had a ten days’ or a week’s rest at least. But in two days’ time they dropped down the Yukon bank from the Barracks, loaded with letters for the outside. The dogs were tired, the drivers grumbling, and to make matters worse, it snowed every day. This meant a soft trail, greater friction on the runners, and heavier pulling for the dogs; yet the drivers were fair through it all, and did their best for the animals.
Each night the dogs were attended to first. They ate before the drivers ate, and no man sought his sleeping-robe till he had seen to the feet of the dogs he drove. Still, their strength went down. Since the beginning of the winter they had travelled eighteen hundred miles, dragging sleds the whole weary distance; and eighteen hundred miles will tell upon life of the toughest. Buck stood it, keeping his mates up to their work and maintaining discipline, though he too was very tired. Billee cried and whimpered regularly in his sleep each night. Joe was sourer than ever, and Sol-leks was unapproachable, blind side or other side.
But it was Dave who suffered most of all. Something had gone wrong with him. He became more morose and irritable, and when camp was pitched at once made his nest, where his driver fed him. Once out of the harness and down, he did not get on his feet again till harness-up time in the morning. Sometimes, in the traces, when jerked by a sudden stoppage of the sled, or by straining to start it, he would cry out with pain. The driver examined him, but could find nothing. All the drivers became interested in his case. They talked it over at meal-time, and over their last pipes before going to bed, and one night they held a consultation. He was brought from his nest to the fire and was pressed and prodded till he cried out many times. Something was wrong inside, but they could locate no broken bones, could not make it out.
By the time Cassiar Bar was reached, he was so weak that he was falling repeatedly in the traces. The Scotch half-breed called a halt and took him out of the team, making the next dog, Sol-leks, fast to the sled. His intention was to rest Dave, letting him run free behind the sled. Sick as he was, Dave resented being taken out, grunting and growling while the traces were unfastened, and whimpering broken-heartedly when he saw Sol-leks in the position he had held and served so long. For the pride of trace and trail was his, and, sick unto death, he could not bear that another dog should do his work.
When the sled started, he floundered in the soft snow alongside the beaten trail, attacking Sol-leks with his teeth, rushing against him and trying to thrust him off into the soft snow on the other side, striving to leap inside his traces and get between him and the sled, and all the while whining and yelping and crying with grief and pain. The half-breed tried to drive him away with the whip; but he paid no heed to the stinging lash, and the man had not the heart to strike harder. Dave refused to run quietly on the trail behind the sled, where the going was easy, but continued to flounder alongside in the soft snow, where the going was most difficult, till exhausted. Then he fell, and lay where he fell, howling lugubriously as the long train of sleds churned by.
With the last remnant of his strength he managed to stagger along behind till the train made another stop, when he floundered past the sleds to his own, where he stood alongside Sol-leks. His driver lingered a moment to get a light for his pipe from the man behind. Then he returned and started his dogs. They swung out on the trail with remarkable lack of exertion, turned their heads uneasily, and stopped in surprise. The driver was surprised, too; the sled had not moved. He called his comrades to witness the sight. Dave had bitten through both of Sol-leks’s traces, and was standing directly in front of the sled in his proper place.
He pleaded with his eyes to remain there. The driver was perplexed. His comrades talked of how a dog could break its heart through being denied the work that killed it, and recalled instances they had known, where dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, had died because they were cut out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content. So he was harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more than once he cried out involuntarily from the bite of his inward hurt. Several times he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and once the sled ran upon him so that he limped thereafter in one of his hind legs.
But he held out till camp was reached, when his driver made a place for him by the fire. Morning found him too weak to travel. At harness-up time he tried to crawl to his driver. By convulsive efforts he got on his feet, staggered, and fell. Then he wormed his way forward slowly toward where the harnesses were being put on his mates. He would advance his fore legs and drag up his body with a sort of hitching movement, when he would advance his fore legs and hitch ahead again for a few more inches. His strength left him, and the last his mates saw of him he lay gasping in the snow and yearning toward them. But they could hear him mournfully howling till they passed out of sight behind a belt of river timber.
Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-breed slowly retraced his steps to the camp they had left. The men ceased talking. A revolver-shot rang out. The man came back hurriedly. The whips snapped, the bells tinkled merrily, the sleds churned along the trail; but Buck knew, and every dog knew, what had taken place behind the belt of river trees.
V
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL
T
HIRTY days from the time it left Dawson, the Salt Water Mail, with Buck and his mates at the fore, arrived at Skaguay. They were in a wretched state, worn out and worn down. Buck’s one hundred and forty pounds had dwindled to one hundred and fifteen. The rest of his mates, though lighter dogs, had relatively lost more weight than he. Pike, the malingerer, who, in his lifetime of deceit, had often successfully feigned a hurt leg, was now limping in earnest. Sol-leks was limping, and Dub was suffering from a wrenched shoulder-blade.
They were all terribly footsore. No spring or rebound was left in them. Their feet fell heavily on the trail, jarring their bodies and doubling the fatigue of a day’s travel. There was nothing the matter with them except that they were dead tired. It was not the dead tiredness that comes through brief and excessive effort, from which recovery is a matter of hours; but it was the dead tiredness that comes through the slow and prolonged strength drainage of months of toil. There was no power of recuperation left, no reserve strength to call upon. It had been all used, the last least bit of it. Every muscle, every fibre, every cell, was tired, dead tired. And there was reason for it. In less than five months they had travelled twenty-five hundred miles, during the last eighteen hundred of which they had had but five days’ rest. When they arrived at Skaguay, they were apparently on their last legs. They could barely keep the traces taut, and on the down grades just managed to keep out of the way of the sled.
45
“Mush on, poor sore feets,” the driver encouraged them as they tottered down the main street of Skaguay. “Dis is de las’. Den we get one long res’. Eh? For sure. One bully long res’.”
The drivers confidently expected a long stopover. Themselves, they had covered twelve hundred miles with two days’ rest, and in the nature of reason and common justice they deserved an interval of loafing. But so many were the men who had rushed into the Klondike, and so many were the sweethearts, wives, and kin that had not rushed in, that the congested mail was taking on Alpine proportions; also, there were official orders. Fresh batches of Hudson Bay dogs were to take the places of those worthless for the trail. The worthless ones were to be got rid of, and, since dogs count for little against dollars, they were to be sold.
Three days passed, by which time Buck and his mates found how really tired and weak they were. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, two men from the States came along and bought them, harness and all, for a song. The men addressed each other as “Hal” and “Charles.” Charles was a middle-aged, lightish-colored man, with weak and watery eyes and a mustache that twisted fiercely and vigorously up, giving the lie to the limply drooping lip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nineteen or twenty, with a big Colt’s revolver and a hunting-knife strapped about him on a belt that fairly bristled with cartridges. This belt was the most salient thing about him. It advertised his callowness—a callowness sheer and unutterable. Both men were manifestly out of place, and why such as they should adventure the North is part of the mystery of things that passes understanding.
Buck heard the chaffering, saw the money pass between the man and the Government agent, and knew that the Scotch half-breed and the mail-train drivers were passing out of his life on the heels of Perrault and François and the others who had gone before. When driven with his mates to the new owners’ camp, Buck saw a slipshod and slovenly affair, tent half stretched, dishes unwashed, every thing in disorder; also, he saw a woman. “Mercedes” the men called her. She was Charles’s wife and Hal’s sister—a nice family party.
Buck watched them apprehensively as they proceeded to take down the tent and load the sled. There was a great deal of effort about their manner, but no businesslike method. The tent was rolled into an awkward bundle three times as large as it should have been. The tin dishes were packed away unwashed. Mercedes continually fluttered in the way of her men and kept up an unbroken chattering of remonstrance and advice. When they put a clothes-sack on the front of the sled, she suggested it should go on the back; and when they had put it on the back, and covered it over with a couple of other bundles, she discovered overlooked articles which could abide nowhere else but in that very sack, and they unloaded again.
Three men from a neighboring tent came out and looked on, grinning and winking at one another.
“You’ve got a right smart load as it is,” said one of them; “and it’s not me should tell you your business, but I wouldn’t tote that tent along if I was you.”
“Undreamed of!” cried Mercedes, throwing up her hands in dainty dismay. “However in the world could I manage without a tent?”
“It’s springtime, and you won’t get any more cold weather,” the man replied.
She shook her head decidedly, and Charles and Hal put the last odds and ends on top the mountainous load.
“Think it’ll ride?” one of the men asked.
“Why shouldn’t it?” Charles demanded rather shortly.
“Oh, that’s all right, that’s all right,” the man hastened meekly to say. “I was just a-wonderin’, that is all. It seemed a mite top-heavy.”
Charles turned his back and drew the lashings down as well as he could, which was not in the least well.
“An’ of course the dogs can hike along all day with that contraption behind them,” affirmed a second of the men.
“Certainly,” said Hal, with freezing politeness, taking hold of the gee-pole with one hand and swinging his whip from the other. “Mush!” he shouted. “Mush on there!”
The dogs sprang against the breast-bands, strained hard for a few moments, then relaxed. They were unable to move the sled.
“The lazy brutes, I’ll show them,” he cried, preparing to lash out at them with the whip.
But Mercedes interfered, crying, “Oh, Hal, you mustn’t,” as she caught hold of the whip and wrenched it from him. “The poor dears! Now you must promise you won’t be harsh with them for the rest of the trip, or I won’t go a step.”
“Precious lot you know about dogs,” her brother sneered; “and I wish you’d leave me alone. They’re lazy, I tell you, and you’ve got to whip them to get anything out of them. That’s their way. You ask any one. Ask one of those men.”
Mercedes looked at them imploringly, untold repugnance at sight of pain written in her pretty face.
“They’re weak as water, if you want to know,” came the reply from one of the men. “Plum tuckered out, that’s what’s the matter. They need a rest.”
“Rest be blanked,” said Hal, with his beardless lips; and Mercedes said, “Oh!” in pain and sorrow at the oath.
But she was a clannish creature, and rushed at once to the defence of her brother. “Never mind that man,” she said pointedly. “You’re driving our dogs, and you do what you think best with them.”
Again Hal’s whip fell upon the dogs. They threw themselves against the breast-bands, dug their feet into the packed snow, got down low to it, and put forth all their strength. The sled held as though it were an anchor. After two efforts, they stood still, panting. The whip was whistling savagely, when once more Mercedes interfered. She dropped on her knees before Buck, with tears in her eyes, and put her arms around his neck.
“You poor, poor dears,” she cried sympathetically, “why don’t you pull hard?—then you wouldn’t be whipped.” Buck did not like her, but he was feeling too miserable to resist her, taking it as part of the day’s miserable work.
One of the onlookers, who had been clenching his teeth to suppress hot speech, now spoke up:—
“It’s not that I care a whoop what becomes of you, but for the dogs’ sakes I just want to tell you, you can help them a mighty lot by breaking out that sled. The runners are froze fast. Throw your weight against the gee-pole, right and left, and break it out.”
A third time the attempt was made, but this time, following the advice, Hal broke out the runners which had been frozen to the snow. The overloaded and unwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his mates struggling frantically under the rain of blows. A hundred yards ahead the path turned and sloped steeply into the main street. It would have required an experienced man to keep the top-heavy sled upright, and Hal was not such a man. As they swung on the turn the sled went over, spilling half its load through the loose lashings. The dogs never stopped. The lightened sled bounded on its side behind them. They were angry because of the ill treatment they had received and the unjust load. Buck was raging. He broke into a run, the team following his lead. Hal cried “Whoa! whoa!” but they gave no heed. He tripped and was pulled off his feet. The capsized sled ground over him, and the dogs dashed on up the street, adding to the gayety of Skaguay as they scattered the remainder of the outfit along its chief thoroughfare.
Kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs and gathered up the scattered belongings. Also, they gave advice. Half the load and twice the dogs, if they ever expected to reach Dawson, was what was said. Hal and his sister and brother-in-law listened unwillingly, pitched tent, and overhauled the outfit. Canned goods were turned out that made men laugh, for canned goods on the Long Trail is a thing to dream about. “Blankets for a hotel” quoth one of the men who laughed and helped. “Half as many is too much; get rid of them. Throw away that tent, and all those dishes,—who’s going to wash them, anyway? Good Lord, do you think you’re travelling on a Pullman?”
And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous. Mercedes cried when her clothes-bags were dumped on the ground and article after article was thrown out. She cried in general, and she cried in particular over each discarded thing. She clasped hands about knees, rocking back and forth broken-heartedly. She averred she would not go an inch, not for a dozen Charleses. She appealed to everybody and to everything, finally wiping her eyes and proceeding to cast out even articles of apparel that were imperative necessaries. And in her zeal, when she had finished with her own, she attacked the belongings of her men and went through them like a tornado.
This accomplished, the outfit, though cut in half, was still a formidable bulk. Charles and Hal went out in the evening and bought six Outside dogs. These, added to the six of the original team, and Teek and Koona, the huskies obtained at the Rink Rapids on the record trip, brought the team up to fourteen. But the Outside dogs, though practically broken in since their landing, did not amount to much. Three were short-haired pointers, one was a Newfoundland, and the other two were mongrels of indeterminate breed. They did not seem to know anything, these newcomers. Buck and his comrades looked upon them with disgust, and though he speedily taught them their places and what not to do, he could not teach them what to do. They did not take kindly to trace and trail. With the exception of the two mongrels, they were bewildered and spirit-broken by the strange savage environment in which they found themselves and by the ill treatment they had received. The two mongrels were without spirit at all; bones were the only things breakable about them.
With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn, and the old team worn out by twenty-five hundred miles of continuous trail, the outlook was anything but bright. The two men, however, were quite cheerful. And they were proud, too. They were doing the thing in style, with fourteen dogs. They had seen other sleds depart over the Pass for Dawson, or come in from Dawson, but never had they seen a sled with so many as fourteen dogs. In the nature of Arctic travel there was a reason why fourteen dogs should not drag one sled, and that was that one sled could not carry the food for fourteen dogs. But Charles and Hal did not know this. They had worked the trip out with a pencil, so much to a dog, so many dogs, so many days, Q. E. D. Mercedes looked over their shoulders and nodded comprehensively, it was all so very simple.
Late next morning Buck led the long team up the street. There was nothing lively about it, no snap or go in him and his fellows. They were starting dead weary. Four times he had covered the distance between Salt Water and Dawson, and the knowledge that, jaded and tired, he was facing the same trail once more, made him bitter. His heart was not in the work, nor was the heart of any dog. The Outsides were timid and frightened, the Insides without confidence in their masters.
Buck felt vaguely that there was no depending upon these two men and the woman. They did not know how to do anything, and as the days went by it became apparent that they could not learn. They were slack in all things, without order or discipline. It took them half the night to pitch a slovenly camp, and half the morning to break that camp and get the sled loaded in fashion so slovenly that for the rest of the day they were occupied in stopping and rearranging the load. Some days they did not make ten miles. On other days they were unable to get started at all. And on no day did they succeed in making more than half the distance used by the men as a basis in their dog-food computation.
It was inevitable that they should go short on dog-food. But they hastened it by overfeeding, bringing the day nearer when underfeeding would commence. The Outside dogs, whose digestions had not been trained by chronic famine to make the most of little, had voracious appetites. And when, in addition to this, the worn-out huskies pulled weakly, Hal decided that the orthodox ration was too small. He doubled it. And to cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a quaver in her throat, could not cajole him into giving the dogs still more, she stole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food that Buck and the huskies needed, but rest. And though they were making poor time, the heavy load they dragged sapped their strength severely.
Then came the underfeeding. Hal awoke one day to the fact that his dog-food was half gone and the distance only quarter covered; further, that for love or money no additional dog-food was to be obtained. So he cut down even the orthodox ration and tried to increase the day’s travel. His sister and brother-in-law seconded him; but they were frustrated by their heavy outfit and their own incompetence. It was a simple matter to give the dogs less food; but it was impossible to make the dogs travel faster, while their own inability to get under way earlier in the morning prevented them from travelling longer hours. Not only did they not know how to work dogs, but they did not know how to work themselves.
The first to go was Dub. Poor blundering thief that he was, always getting caught and punished, he had none the less been a faithful worker.
His wrenched shoulder-blade, untreated and unrested, went from bad to worse, till finally Hal shot him with the big Colt’s revolver. It is a saying of the country that an Outside dog starves to death on the ration of the husky, so the six Outside dogs under Buck could do no less than die on half the ration of the husky. The Newfoundland went first, followed by the three short-haired pointers, the two mongrels hanging more grittily on to life, but going in the end.
By this time all the amenities and gentlenesses of the Southland had fallen away from the three people. Shorn of its glamour and romance, Arctic travel became to them a reality too harsh for their manhood and womanhood. Mercedes ceased weeping over the dogs, being too occupied with weeping over herself and with quarrelling with her husband and brother. To quarrel was the one thing they were never too weary to do. Their irritability arose out of their misery, increased with it, doubled upon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful patience of the trail which comes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speech and kindly, did not come to these two men and the woman. They had no inkling of such a patience. They were stiff and in pain; their muscles ached, their bones ached, their very hearts ached; and because of this they became sharp of speech, and hard words were first on their lips in the morning and last at night.
Charles and Hal wrangled whenever Mercedes gave them a chance. It was the cherished belief of each that he did more than his share of the work, and neither forbore to speak his belief at every opportunity. Sometimes Mercedes sided with her husband, sometimes with her brother. The result was a beautiful and unending family quarrel. Starting from a dispute as to which should chop a few sticks for the fire (a dispute which concerned only Charles and Hal), presently would be lugged in the rest of the family, fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, people thousands of miles away, and some of them dead. That Hal’s views on art, or the sort of society plays his mother’s brother wrote, should have anything to do with the chopping of a few sticks of firewood, passes comprehension; nevertheless the quarrel was as likely to tend in that direction as in the direction of Charles’s political prejudices. And that Charles’s sister’s tale-bearing tongue should be relevant to the building of a Yukon fire, was apparent only to Mercedes, who disburdened herself of copious opinions upon that topic, and incidentally upon a few other traits unpleasantly peculiar to her husband’s family. In the meantime the fire remained unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and the dogs unfed.
Mercedes nursed a special grievance—the grievance of sex. She was pretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days. But the present treatment by her husband and brother was everything save chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless. They complained. Upon which impeachment of what to her was her most essential sexprerogative, she made their lives unendurable. She no longer considered the dogs, and because she was sore and tired, she persisted in riding on the sled. She was pretty and soft, but she weighed one hundred and twenty pounds—a lusty last straw to the load dragged by the weak and starving animals. She rode for days, till they fell in the traces and the sled stood still. Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded with her, entreated, the while she wept and importuned Heaven with a recital of their brutality.
On one occasion they took her off the sled by main strength. They never did it again. She let her legs go limp like a spoiled child, and sat down on the trail. They went on their way, but she did not move. After they had travelled three miles they unloaded the sled, came back for her, and by main strength put her on the sled again.
In the excess of their own misery they were callous to the suffering of their animals. Hal’s theory, which he practised on others, was that one must get hardened. He had started out preaching it to his sister and brother-in-law. Failing there, he hammered it into the dogs with a club. At the Five Fingers the dog-food gave out, and a toothless old squaw offered to trade them a few pounds of frozen horse-hide for the Colt’s revolver that kept the big hunting-knife company at Hal’s hip. A poor substitute for food was this hide, just as it had been stripped from the starved horses of the cattlemen six months back. In its frozen state it was more like strips of galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it into his stomach, it thawed into thin and innutritious leathery strings and into a mass of short hair, irritating and indigestible.
And through it all Buck staggered along at the head of the team as in a nightmare. He pulled when he could; when he could no longer pull, he fell down and remained down till blows from whip or club drove him to his feet again. All the stiffness and gloss had gone out of his beautiful furry coat. The hair hung down, limp and draggled, or matted with dried blood where Hal’s club had bruised him. His muscles had wasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had disappeared, so that each rib and every bone in his frame were outlined cleanly through the loose hide that was wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It was heartbreaking, only Buck’s heart was unbreakable. The man in the red sweater had proved that.
As it was with Buck, so was it with his mates. They were perambulating skeletons. There were seven all together, including him. In their very great misery they had become insensible to the bite of the lash or the bruise of the club. The pain of the beating was dull and distant, just as the things their eyes saw and their ears heard seemed dull and distant. They were not half living, or quarter living. They were simply so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly. When a halt was made, they dropped down in the traces like dead dogs, and the spark dimmed and paled and seemed to go out. And when the club or whip fell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, and they tottered to their feet and staggered on.
There came a day when Billee, the good-natured, fell and could not rise. Hal had traded off his revolver, so he took the axe and knocked Billee on the head as he lay in the traces, then cut the carcass out of the harness and dragged it to one side. Buck saw, and his mates saw, and they knew that this thing was very close to them. On the next day Koona went, and but five of them remained: Joe, too far gone to be malignant; Pike, crippled and limping, only half conscious and not conscious enough longer to malinger; Sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the toil of trace and trail, and mournful in that he had so little strength with which to pull; Teek, who had not travelled so far that winter and who was now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; and Buck, still at the head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline or striving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the time and keeping the trail by the loom of it and by the dim feel of his feet.
It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs nor humans were aware of it. Each day the sun rose earlier and set later. It was dawn by three in the morning, and twilight lingered till nine at night. The whole long day was a blaze of sunshine. The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from all the land, fraught with the joy of living. It came from the things that lived and moved again, things which had been as dead and which had not moved during the long months of frost. The sap was rising in the pines. The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubs and vines were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in the nights, and in the days all manner of creeping, crawling things rustled forth into the sun. Partridges and woodpeckers were booming and knocking in the forest. Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and overhead honked the wild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning wedges that split the air.
From every hill slope came the trickle of running water, the music of unseen fountains. All things were thawing, bending, snapping. The Yukon was straining to break loose the ice that bound it down. It ate away from beneath; the sun ate from above. Air-holes formed, fissures sprang and spread apart, while thin sections of ice fell through bodily into the river. And amid all this bursting, rending, throbbing of awakening life, under the blazing sun and through the soft-sighing breezes, like wayfarers to death, staggered the two men, the woman, and the huskies.
With the dogs falling, Mercedes weeping and riding, Hal swearing innocuously, and Charles’s eyes wistfully watering, they staggered into John Thornton’s camp at the mouth of White River. When they halted, the dogs dropped down as though they had all been struck dead. Mercedes dried her eyes and looked at John Thornton. Charles sat down on a log to rest. He sat down very slowly and painstakingly, what of his great stiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thornton was whittling the last touches on an axe-handle he had made from a stick of birch. He whittled and listened, gave monosyllabic replies, and, when it was asked, terse advice. He knew the breed, and he gave his advice in the certainty that it would not be followed.
“They told us up above that the bottom was dropping out of the trail and that the best thing for us to do was to lay over,” Hal said in response to Thornton’s warning to take no more chances on the rotten ice. “They told us we couldn’t make White River, and here we are.” This last with a sneering ring of triumph in it.
“And they told you true,” John Thornton answered. “The bottom’s likely to drop out at any moment. Only fools, with the blind luck of fools, could have made it. I tell you straight, I wouldn’t risk my carcass on that ice for all the gold in Alaska.”
“That’s because you’re not a fool, I suppose,” said Hal. “All the same, we’ll go on to Dawson.” He uncoiled his whip. “Get up there, Buck! Hi! Get up there! Mush on!”
Thornton went on whittling. It was idle, he knew, to get between a fool and his folly, while two or three fools more or less would not alter the scheme of things.
But the team did not get up at the command. It had long since passed into the stage where blows were required to rouse it. The whip flashed out, here and there, on its merciless errands. John Thornton compressed his lips. Sol-leks was the first to crawl to his feet. Teek followed. Joe came next, yelping with pain. Pike made painful efforts. Twice he fell over, when half up, and on the third attempt managed to rise. Buck made no effort. He lay quietly where he had fallen. The lash bit into him again and again, but he neither whined nor struggled. Several times Thornton started, as though to speak, but changed his mind. A moisture came into his eyes, and, as the whipping continued, he arose and walked irresolutely up and down.
This was the first time Buck had failed, in itself a sufficient reason to drive Hal into a rage. He exchanged the whip for the customary club. Buck refused to move under the rain of heavier blows which now fell upon him. Like his mates, he was barely able to get up, but, unlike them, he had made up his mind not to get up. He had a vague feeling of impending doom. This had been strong upon him when he pulled in to the bank, and it had not departed from him. What of the thin and rotten ice he had felt under his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster close at hand, out there ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive him. He refused to stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so far gone was he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they continued to fall upon him, the spark of life within flickered and went down. It was nearly out. He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he was aware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. He no longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of the club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far away.
And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a cry that was inarticulate and more like the cry of an animal, John Thornton sprang upon the man who wielded the club. Hal was hurled backward, as though struck by a falling tree. Mercedes screamed. Charles looked on wistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did not get up because of his stiffness.
John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling to control himself, too convulsed with rage to speak.
“If you strike that dog again, I’ll kill you,” he at last managed to say in a choking voice.
“It’s my dog,” Hal replied, wiping the blood from his mouth as he came back. “Get out of my way, or I’ll fix you. I’m going to Dawson.”
Thornton stood between him and Buck, and evinced no intention of getting out of the way. Hal drew his long hunting-knife. Mercedes screamed, cried, laughed, and manifested the chaotic abandonment of hysteria. Thornton rapped Hal’s knuckles with the axe-handle, knocking the knife to the ground. He rapped his knuckles again as he tried to pick it up. Then he stooped, picked it up himself, and with two strokes cut Buck’s traces.
Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his hands were full with his sister, or his arms, rather; while Buck was too near dead to be of further use in hauling the sled. A few minutes later they pulled out from the bank and down the river. Buck heard them go and raised his head to see. Pike was leading, Sol-leks was at the wheel, and between were Joe and Teek. They were limping and staggering. Mercedes was riding the loaded sled. Hal guided at the gee-pole, and Charles stumbled along in the rear.
As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him and with rough, kindly hands searched for broken bones. By the time his search had disclosed nothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, the sled was a quarter of a mile away. Dog and man watched it crawling along over the ice. Suddenly, they saw its back end drop down, as into a rut, and the gee-pole, with Hal clinging to it, jerk into the air. Mercedes’s scream came to their ears. They saw Charles turn and make one step to run back, and then a whole section of ice give way and dogs and humans disappear. A yawning hole was all that was to be seen.
The bottom had dropped out of the trail.
John Thornton and Buck looked at each other.
“You poor devil,” said John Thornton, and Buck licked his hand.
VI
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN
W
HEN John Thornton froze his feet in the previous December, his partners had made him comfortable and left him to get well, going on themselves up the river to get out a raft of saw-
logs for Dawson. He was still limping slightly at the time he rescued Buck, but with the continued warm weather even the slight limp left him. And here, lying by the river bank through the long spring days, watching the running water, listening lazily to the songs of birds and the hum of nature, Buck slowly won back his strength.
A rest comes very good after one has travelled three thousand miles, and it must be confessed that Buck waxed lazy as his wounds healed, his muscles swelled out, and the flesh came back to cover his bones. For that matter, they were all loafing,—Buck, John Thornton, and Skeet and Nig,—waiting for the raft to come that was to carry them down to Dawson. Skeet was a little Irish setter who early made friends with Buck, who, in a dying condition, was unable to resent her first advances. She had the doctor trait which some dogs possess; and as a mother cat washes her kittens, so she washed and cleansed Buck’s wounds. Regularly, each morning after he had finished his breakfast, she performed her self-appointed task, till he came to look for her ministrations as much as he did for Thornton’s. Nig, equally friendly, though less demonstrative, was a huge black dog, half bloodhound and half deerhound, with eyes that laughed and a boundless good nature. To Buck’s surprise these dogs manifested no jealousy toward him. They seemed to share the kindliness and largeness of John Thornton. As Buck
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grew stronger they enticed him into all sorts of ridiculous games, in which Thornton himself could not forbear to join; and in this fashion Buck romped through his convalescence and into a new existence. Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time. This he had never experienced at Judge Miller’s down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. With the Judge’s sons, hunting and tramping, it had been a working partnership; with the Judge’s grandsons, a sort of pompous guardianship; and with the Judge himself, a stately and dignified friendship. But love that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken John Thornton to arouse.
This man had saved his life, which was something; but, further, he was the ideal master. Other men saw to the welfare of their dogs from a sense of duty and business expediency; he saw to the welfare of his as if they were his own children, because he could not help it. And he saw further. He never forgot a kindly greeting or a cheering word, and to sit down for a long talk with them (“gas” he called it) was as much his delight as theirs. He had a way of taking Buck’s head roughly between his hands, and resting his own head upon Buck’s, of shaking him back and forth, the while calling him ill names that to Buck were love names. Buck knew no greater joy than that rough embrace and the sound of murmured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his heart would be shaken out of his body, so great was its ecstasy. And when, released, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent, his throat vibrant with unuttered sound, and in that fashion remained without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, “God! you can all but speak!”
Buck had a trick of love expression that was akin to hurt. He would often seize Thornton’s hand in his mouth and close so fiercely that the flesh bore the impress of his teeth for some time afterward. And as Buck understood the oaths to be love words, so the man understood this feigned bite for a caress.
For the most part, however, Buck’s love was expressed in adoration. While he went wild with happiness when Thornton touched him or spoke to him, he did not seek these tokens. Unlike Skeet, who was wont to shove her nose under Thornton’s hand and nudge and nudge till petted, or Nig, who would stalk up and rest his great head on Thornton’s knee, Buck was content to adore at a distance. He would lie by the hour, eager, alert, at Thornton’s feet, looking up into his face, dwelling upon it, studying it, following with keenest interest each fleeting expression, every movement or change of feature. Or, as chance might have it, he would lie farther away, to the side or rear, watching the outlines of the man and the occasional movements of his body. And often, such was the communion in which they lived, the strength of Buck’s gaze would draw John Thornton’s head around, and he would return the gaze, without speech, his heart shining out of his eyes as Buck’s heart shone out.
For a long time after his rescue, Buck did not like Thornton to get out of his sight. From the moment he left the tent to when he entered it again, Buck would follow at his heels. His transient masters since he had come into the Northland had bred in him a fear that no master could be permanent. He was afraid that Thornton would pass out of his life as Perrault and François and the Scotch half-breed had passed out. Even in the night, in his dreams, he was haunted by this fear. At such times he would shake off sleep and creep through the chill to the flap of the tent, where he would stand and listen to the sound of his master’s breathing.
But in spite of this great love he bore John Thornton, which seemed to bespeak the soft civilizing influence, the strain of the primitive, which the Northland had aroused in him, remained alive and active. Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his; yet he retained his wildness and wiliness. He was a thing of the wild, come in from the wild to sit by John Thornton’s fire, rather than a dog of the soft Southland stamped with the marks of generations of civilization. Because of his very great love, he could not steal from this man, but from any other man, in any other camp, he did not hesitate an instant; while the cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape detection.
His face and body were scored by the teeth of many dogs, and he fought as fiercely as ever and more shrewdly. Skeet and Nig were too good-natured for quarrelling,—besides, they belonged to John Thornton; but the strange dog, no matter what the breed or valor, swiftly acknowledged Buck’s supremacy or found himself struggling for life with a terrible antagonist. And Buck was merciless. He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.
He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn. He linked the past with the present, and the eternity behind him throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the tides and seasons swayed. He sat by John Thornton’s fire, a broadbreasted dog, white-fanged and long-furred; but behind him were the shades of all manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting, tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank, scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him the sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down, and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff of his dreams.
So peremptorily did these shades beckon him, that each day mankind and the claims of mankind slipped farther from him. Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest. But as often as he gained the soft unbroken earth and the green shade, the love for John Thornton drew him back to the fire again.
Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as nothing. Chance travellers might praise or pet him; but he was cold under it all, and from a too demonstrative man he would get up and walk away. When Thornton’s partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the long-expected raft, Buck refused to notice them till he learned they were close to Thornton; after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way, accepting favors from them as though he favored them by accepting. They were of the same large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and seeing clearly; and ere they swung the raft into the big eddy by the saw-mill at Dawson, they understood Buck and his ways, and did not insist upon an intimacy such as obtained with Skeet and Nig.
For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow. He, alone among men, could put a pack upon Buck’s back in the summer travelling. Nothing was too great for Buck to do, when Thornton commanded. One day (they had grub-staked themselves from the proceeds of the raft and left Dawson for the head-waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to naked bed-rock three hundred feet below. John Thornton was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind. “Jump, Buck!” he commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm. The next instant he was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were dragging them back into safety.
“It’s uncanny,” Pete said, after it was over and they had caught their speech.
Thornton shook his head. “No, it is splendid, and it is terrible, too. Do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid.”
“I’m not hankering to be the man that lays hands on you while he’s around,” Pete announced conclusively, nodding his head toward Buck.
“Py Jingo!” was Hans’s contribution, “not mineself either.”
It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that Pete’s apprehensions were realized. “Black” Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had been picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot at the bar, when Thornton stepped good-naturedly between. Buck, as was his custom, was lying in a corner, head on paws, watching his master’s every action. Burton struck out, without warning, straight from the shoulder. Thornton was sent spinning, and saved himself from falling only by clutching the rail of the bar.
Those who were looking on heard what was neither bark nor yelp, but a something which is best described as a roar, and they saw Buck’s body rise up in the air as he left the floor for Burton’s throat. The man saved his life by instinctively throwing out his arm, but was hurled backward to the floor with Buck on top of him. Buck loosed his teeth from the flesh of the arm and drove in again for the throat. This time the man succeeded only in partly blocking, and his throat was torn open. Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he was driven off; but while a surgeon checked the bleeding, he prowled up and down, growling furiously, attempting to rush in, and being forced back by an array of hostile clubs. A “miners’ meeting,” called on the spot, decided that the dog had sufficient provocation, and Buck was discharged. But his reputation was made, and from that day his name spread through every camp in Alaska.
Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved John Thornton’s life in quite another fashion. The three partners were lining a long and narrow poling-boat down a bad stretch of rapids on the Forty-Mile Creek. Hans and Pete moved along the bank, snubbing with a thin Manila rope from tree to tree, while Thornton remained in the boat, helping its descent by means of a pole, and shouting directions to the shore. Buck, on the bank, worried and anxious, kept abreast of the boat, his eyes never off his master.
At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge of barely submerged rocks jutted out into the river, Hans cast off the rope, and, while Thornton poled the boat out into the stream, ran down the bank with the end in his hand to snub the boat when it had cleared the ledge. This it did, and was flying down-stream in a current as swift as a mill-race, when Hans checked it with the rope and checked too suddenly. The boat flirted over and snubbed in to the bank bottom up, while Thornton, flung sheer out of it, was carried down-stream toward the worst part of the rapids, a stretch of wild water in which no swimmer could live.
Buck had sprung in on the instant; and at the end of three hundred yards, amid a mad swirl of water, he overhauled Thornton. When he felt him grasp his tail, Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all his splendid strength. But the progress shoreward was slow; the progress down-stream amazingly rapid. From below came the fatal roaring where the wild current went wilder and was rent in shreds and spray by the rocks which thrust through like the teeth of an enormous comb. The suck of the water as it took the beginning of the last steep pitch was frightful, and Thornton knew that the shore was impossible. He scraped furiously over a rock, bruised across a second, and struck a third with crushing force. He clutched its slippery top with both hands, releasing Buck, and above the roar of the churning water shouted: “Go, Buck! Go!”
Buck could not hold his own, and swept on down-stream, struggling desperately, but unable to win back. When he heard Thornton’s command repeated, he partly reared out of the water, throwing his head high, as though for a last look, then turned obediently toward the bank. He swam powerfully and was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point where swimming ceased to be possible and destruction began.
They knew that the time a man could cling to a slippery rock in the face of that driving current was a matter of minutes, and they ran as fast as they could up the bank to a point far above where Thornton was hanging on. They attached the line with which they had been snubbing the boat to Buck’s neck and shoulders, being careful that it should neither strangle him nor impede his swimming, and launched him into the stream. He struck out boldly, but not straight enough into the stream. He discovered the mistake too late, when Thornton was abreast of him and a bare half-dozen strokes away while he was being carried helplessly past.
Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as though Buck were a boat. The rope thus tightening on him in the sweep of the current, he was jerked under the surface, and under the surface he remained till his body struck against the bank and he was hauled out. He was half drowned, and Hans and Pete threw themselves upon him, pounding the breath into him and the water out of him. He staggered to his feet and fell down. The faint sound of Thornton’s voice came to them, and though they could not make out the words of it, they knew that he was in his extremity. His master’s voice acted on Buck like an electric shock, He sprang to his feet and ran up the bank ahead of the men to the point of his previous departure.
Again the rope was attached and he was launched, and again he struck out, but this time straight into the stream. He had miscalculated once, but he would not be guilty of it a second time. Hans paid out the rope, permitting no slack, while Pete kept it clear of coils. Buck held on till he was on a line straight above Thornton; then he turned, and with the speed of an express train headed down upon him. Thornton saw him coming, and, as Buck struck him like a battering ram, with the whole force of the current behind him, he reached up and closed with both arms around the shaggy neck. Hans snubbed the rope around the tree, and Buck and Thornton were jerked under the water. Strangling, suffocating, sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, they veered in to the bank.
Thornton came to, belly downward and being violently propelled back and forth across a drift log by Hans and Pete. His first glance was for Buck, over whose limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was setting up a howl, while Skeet was licking the wet face and closed eyes. Thornton was himself bruised and battered, and he went carefully over Buck’s body, when he had been brought around, finding three broken ribs.
“That settles it,” he announced. “We camp right here.” And camp they did, till Buck’s ribs knitted and he was able to travel.
That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another exploit, not so heroic, perhaps, but one that put his name many notches higher on the totem-pole of Alaskan fame. This exploit was particularly gratifying to the three men; for they stood in need of the outfit which it furnished, and were enabled to make a long-desired trip into the virgin East, where miners had not yet appeared. It was brought about by a conversation in the Eldorado Saloon, in which men waxed boastful of their favorite dogs. Buck, because of his record, was the target for these men, and Thornton was driven stoutly to defend him. At the end of half an hour one man stated that his dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds and walk off with it; a second bragged six hundred for his dog; and a third, seven hundred.
“Pooh! pooh!” said John Thornton; “Buck can start a thousand pounds.”
“And break it out? and walk off with it for a hundred yards?” demanded Matthewson, a Bonanza King, he of the seven hundred vaunt.
“And break it out, and walk off with it for a hundred yards,” John Thornton said coolly.
“Well,” Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately, so that all could hear, “I’ve got a thousand dollars that says he can’t. And there it is.” So saying, he slammed a sack of gold dust of the size of a bologna sausage down upon the bar.
Nobody spoke. Thornton’s bluff, if bluff it was, had been called. He could feel a flush of warm blood creeping up his face. His tongue had tricked him. He did not know whether Buck could start a thousand pounds. Half a ton! The enormousness of it appalled him. He had great faith in Buck’s strength and had often thought him capable of starting such a load; but never, as now, had he faced the possibility of it, the eyes of a dozen men fixed upon him, silent and waiting. Further, he had no thousand dollars; nor had Hans or Pete.
“I’ve got a sled standing outside now, with twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour on it,” Matthewson went on with brutal directness; “so don’t let that hinder you.”
Thornton did not reply. He did not know what to say. He glanced from face to face in the absent way of a man who has lost the power of thought and is seeking somewhere to find the thing that will start it going again. The face of Jim O’Brien, a Mastodon King and old-time comrade, caught his eyes. It was as a cue to him, seeming to rouse him to do what he would never have dreamed of doing.
“Can you lend me a thousand?” he asked, almost in a whisper.
“Sure,” answered O’Brien, thumping down a plethoric sack by the side of Matthewson’s. “Though it’s little faith I’m having, John, that the beast can do the trick.”
The Eldorado emptied its occupants into the street to see the test. The tables were deserted, and the dealers and gamekeepers came forth to see the outcome of the wager and to lay odds. Several hundred men, furred and mittened, banked around the sled within easy distance. Matthewson’s sled, loaded with a thousand pounds of flour, had been standing for a couple of hours, and in the intense cold (it was sixty below zero) the runners had frozen fast to the hard-packed snow. Men offered odds of two to one that Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble arose concerning the phrase “break out.” O’Brien contended it was Thornton’s privilege to knock the runners loose, leaving Buck to “break it out” from a dead standstill. Matthewson insisted that the phrase included breaking the runners from the frozen grip of the snow. A majority of the men who had witnessed the making of the bet decided in his favor, whereat the odds went up to three to one against Buck.
There were no takers. Not a man believed him capable of the feat. Thornton had been hurried into the wager, heavy with doubt; and now that he looked at the sled itself, the concrete fact, with the regular team of ten dogs curled up in the snow before it, the more impossible the task appeared. Matthewson waxed jubilant.
“Three to one!” he proclaimed. “I’ll lay you another thousand at that figure, Thornton. What d’ye say?”
Thornton’s doubt was strong in his face, but his fighting spirit was aroused—the fighting spirit that soars above odds, fails to recognize the impossible, and is deaf to all save the clamor for battle. He called Hans and Pete to him. Their sacks were slim, and with his own the three partners could rake together only two hundred dollars. In the ebb of their fortunes, this sum was their total capital; yet they laid it unhesitatingly against Matthewson’s six hundred.
The team of ten dogs was unhitched, and Buck, with his own harness, was put into the sled. He had caught the contagion of the excitement, and he felt that in some way he must do a great thing for John Thornton. Murmurs of admiration at his splendid appearance went up. He was in perfect condition, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, and the one hundred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so many pounds of grit and virility. His furry coat shone with the sheen of silk. Down the neck and across the shoulders, his mane, in repose as it was, half bristled and seemed to lift with every movement, as though excess of vigor made each particular hair alive and active. The great breast and heavy fore legs were no more than in proportion with the rest of the body, where the muscles showed in tight rolls underneath the skin. Men felt these muscles and proclaimed them hard as iron, and the odds went down to two to one.
“Gad, sir! Gad, sir!” stuttered a member of the latest dynasty, a king of the Skookum Benches. “I offer you eight hundred for him, sir, before the test, sir; eight hundred just as he stands.”
Thornton shook his head and stepped to Buck’s side.
“You must stand off from him,” Matthewson protested. “Free play and plenty of room.”
The crowd fell silent; only could be heard the voices of the gamblers vainly offering two to one. Everybody acknowledged Buck a magnificent animal, but twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour bulked too large in their eyes for them to loosen their pouch-strings.
Thornton knelt down by Buck’s side. He took his head in his two hands and rested cheek on cheek. He did not playfully shake him, as was his wont, or murmur soft love curses; but he whispered in his ear. “As you love me, Buck. As you love me,” was what he whispered. Buck whined with suppressed eagerness.
The crowd was watching curiously. The affair was growing mysterious. It seemed like a conjuration. As Thornton got to his feet, Buck seized his mittened hand between his jaws, pressing in with his teeth and releasing slowly, half-reluctantly. It was the answer, in terms, not of speech, but of love. Thornton stepped well back.
“Now, Buck,” he said.
Buck tightened the traces, then slacked them for a matter of several inches. It was the way he had learned.
“Gee!” Thornton’s voice rang out, sharp in the tense silence.
Buck swung to the right, ending the movement in a plunge that took up the slack and with a sudden jerk arrested his one hundred and fifty pounds. The load quivered, and from under the runners arose a crisp crackling.
“Haw!” Thornton commanded.
Buck duplicated the manœuvre, this time to the left. The crackling turned into a snapping, the sled pivoting and the runners slipping and grating several inches to the side. The sled was broken out. Men were holding their breaths, intensely unconscious of the fact.
“Now, MUSH!”
Thornton’s command cracked out like a pistol-shot. Buck threw himself forward, tightening the traces with a jarring lunge. His whole body was gathered compactly together in the tremendous effort, the muscles writhing and knotting like live things under the silky fur. His great chest was low to the ground, his head forward and down, while his feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the hard-packed snow in parallel grooves. The sled swayed and trembled, half-started forward. One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. Then the sled lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid succession of jerks, though it never really came to a dead stop again . . . half an inch . . . an inch . . . two inches. . . . The jerks perceptibly diminished; as the sled gained momentum, he caught them up, till it was moving steadily along.
Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment they had ceased to breathe. Thornton was running behind, encouraging Buck with short, cheery words. The distance had been measured off, and as he neared the pile of firewood which marked the end of the hundred yards, a cheer began to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he passed the firewood and halted at command. Every man was tearing himself loose, even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general incoherent babel.
But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head was against head, and he was shaking him back and forth. Those who hurried up heard him cursing Buck, and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and lovingly.
“Gad, sir! Gad, sir!” spluttered the Skookum Bench king. “I’ll give you a thousand for him, sir, a thousand, sir—twelve hundred, sir.”
Thornton rose to his feet. His eyes were wet. The tears were streaming frankly down his cheeks. “Sir,” he said to the Skookum Bench king, “no, sir. You can go to hell, sir. It’s the best I can do for you, sir.”
Buck seized Thornton’s hand in his teeth. Thornton shook him back and forth. As though animated by a common impulse, the onlookers drew back to a respectful distance; nor were they again indiscreet enough to interrupt.
VII
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL
W
HEN Buck earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for John Thornton, he made it possible for his master to pay off certain debts and to journey with his partners into the East after a fabled lost mine, the history of which was as old as the history of the country. Many men had sought it; few had found it; and more than a few there were who had never returned from the quest. This lost mine was steeped in tragedy and shrouded in mystery. No one knew of the first man. The oldest tradition stopped before it got back to him. From the beginning there had been an ancient and ramshackle cabin. Dying men had sworn to it, and to the mine the site of which it marked, clinching their testimony with nuggets that were unlike any known grade of gold in the Northland.
But no living man had looted this treasure house, and the dead were dead; wherefore John Thornton and Pete and Hans, with Buck and half a dozen other dogs, faced into the East on an unknown trail to achieve where men and dogs as good as themselves had failed. They sledded seventy miles up the Yukon, swung to the left into the Stewart River, passed the Mayo and the McQuestion, and held on until the Stewart itself became a streamlet, threading the upstanding peaks which marked the backbone of the continent.
John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He was unafraid of the wild. With a handful of salt and a rifle he could plunge into the wilderness and fare wherever he pleased and as long as he pleased. Being in no haste, Indian fashion, he hunted his dinner in the course of
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the day’s travel; and if he failed to find it, like the Indian, he kept on travelling, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later he would come to it. So, on this great journey into the East, straight meat was the bill of fare, ammunition and tools principally made up the load on the sled, and the time-card was drawn upon the limitless future.
To Buck it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing, and indefinite wandering through strange places. For weeks at a time they would hold on steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, here and there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes through frozen muck and gravel and washing countless pans of dirt by the heat of the fire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they feasted riotously, all according to the abundance of game and the fortune of hunting. Summer arrived, and dogs and men packed on their backs, rafted across blue mountain lakes, and descended or ascended unknown rivers in slender boats whipsawed from the standing forest.
The months came and went, and back and forth they twisted through the uncharted vastness, where no men were and yet where men had been if the Lost Cabin were true. They went across divides in summer blizzards, shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast. In the fall of the year they penetrated a weird lake country, sad and silent, where wild-fowl had been, but where then there was no life nor sign of life—only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in sheltered places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches.
And through another winter they wandered on the obliterated trails of men who had gone before. Once, they came upon a path blazed through the forest, an ancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near. But the path began nowhere and ended nowhere, and it remained mystery, as the man who made it and the reason he made it remained mystery. Another time they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of a hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of rotted blankets John Thornton found a long-barrelled flint-lock. He knew it for a Hudson Bay Company gun of the young days in the Northwest, when such a gun was worth its height in beaver skins packed flat, And that was all—no hint as to the man who in an early day had reared the lodge and left the gun among the blankets.
Spring came on once more, and at the end of all their wandering they found, not the Lost Cabin, but a shallow placer in a broad valley where the gold showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the washingpan. They sought no farther. Each day they worked earned them thousands of dollars in clean dust and nuggets, and they worked every day. The gold was sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to the bag, and piled like so much firewood outside the spruce-bough lodge. Like giants they toiled, days flashing on the heels of days like dreams as they heaped the treasure up.
There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the hauling in of meat now and again that Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing by the fire. The vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him more frequently, now that there was little work to be done; and often, blinking by the fire, Buck wandered with him in that other world which he remembered.
The salient thing of this other world seemed fear. When he watched the hairy man sleeping by the fire, head between his knees and hands clasped above, Buck saw that he slept restlessly, with many starts and awakenings, at which times he would peer fearfully into the darkness and fling more wood upon the fire. Did they walk by the beach of a sea, where the hairy man gathered shell-fish and ate them as he gathered, it was with eyes that roved everywhere for hidden danger and with legs prepared to run like the wind at its first appearance. Through the forest they crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy man’s heels; and they were alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears twitching and moving and nostrils quivering, for the man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck. The hairy man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as on the ground, swinging by the arms from limb to limb, sometimes a dozen feet apart, letting go and catching, never falling, never missing his grip. In fact, he seemed as much at home among the trees as on the ground; and Buck had memories of nights of vigil spent beneath trees wherein the hairy man roosted, holding on tightly as he slept.
And closely akin to the visions of the hairy man was the call still sounding in the depths of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest and strange desires. It caused him to feel a vague, sweet gladness, and he was aware of wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew not what. Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though it were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood might dictate. He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earth smells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind fungus-covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-eared to all that moved and sounded about him. It might be, lying thus, that he hoped to surprise this call he could not understand. But he did not know why he did these various things. He was impelled to do them, and did not reason about them at all.
Irresistible impulses seized him. He would be lying in camp, dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly his head would lift and his ears cock up, intent and listening, and he would spring to his feet and dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the forest aisles and across the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched. He loved to run down dry watercourses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in the woods. For a day at a time he would lie in the underbrush where he could watch the partridges drumming and strutting up and down. But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something, that called—called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.
One night he sprang from sleep with a start, eager-eyed, nostrils quivering and scenting, his mane bristling in recurrent waves. From the forest came the call (or one note of it, for the call was many noted), distinct and definite as never before,—a long-drawn howl, like, yet unlike, any noise made by husky dog. And he knew it, in the old familiar way, as a sound heard before. He sprang through the sleeping camp and in swift silence dashed through the woods. As he drew closer to the cry he went more slowly, with caution in every movement, till he came to an open place among the trees, and looking out saw, erect on haunches, with nose pointed to the sky, a long, lean, timber wolf.
He had made no noise, yet it ceased from its howling and tried to sense his presence. Buck stalked into the open, half crouching, body gathered compactly together, tail straight and stiff, feet falling with unwonted care. Every movement advertised commingled threatening and overture of friendliness. It was the menacing truce that marks the meeting of wild beasts that prey. But the wolf fled at sight of him. He followed, with wild leapings, in a frenzy to overtake. He ran him into a blind channel, in the bed of the creek, where a timber jam barred the way. The wolf whirled about, pivoting on his hind legs after the fashion of Joe and of all cornered husky dogs, snarling and bristling, clipping his teeth together in a continuous and rapid succession of snaps.
Buck did not attack, but circled him about and hedged him in with friendly advances. The wolf was suspicious and afraid; for Buck made three of him in weight, while his head barely reached Buck’s shoulder. Watching his chance, he darted away, and the chase was resumed. Time and again he was cornered, and the thing repeated, though he was in poor condition or Buck could not so easily have overtaken him. He would run till Buck’s head was even with his flank, when he would whirl around at bay, only to dash away again at the first opportunity.
But in the end Buck’s pertinacity was rewarded; for the wolf, finding that no harm was intended, finally sniffed noses with him. Then they became friendly, and played about in the nervous, half-coy way with which fierce beasts belie their fierceness. After some time of this the wolf started off at an easy lope in a manner that plainly showed he was going somewhere. He made it clear to Buck that he was to come, and they ran side by side through the sombre twilight, straight up the creek bed, into the gorge from which it issued, and across the bleak divide where it took its rise.
On the opposite slope of the watershed they came down into a level country where were great stretches of forest and many streams, and through these great stretches they ran steadily, hour after hour, the sun rising higher and the day growing warmer. Buck was wildly glad. He knew he was at last answering the call, running by the side of his wood brother toward the place from where the call surely came. Old memories were coming upon him fast, and he was stirring to them as of old he stirred to the realities of which they were the shadows. He had done this thing before, somewhere in that other and dimly remembered world, and he was doing it again, now, running free in the open, the unpacked earth underfoot, the wide sky overhead.
They stopped by a running stream to drink, and, stopping, Buck remembered John Thornton. He sat down. The wolf started on toward the place from where the call surely came, then returned to him, sniffing noses and making actions as though to encourage him. But Buck turned about and started slowly on the back track. For the better part of an hour the wild brother ran by his side, whining softly. Then he sat down, pointed his nose upward, and howled. It was a mournful howl, and as Buck held steadily on his way he heard it grow faint and fainter until it was lost in the distance.
John Thornton was eating dinner when Buck dashed into camp and sprang upon him in a frenzy of affection, overturning him, scrambling upon him, licking his face, biting his hand—“playing the general tomfool,” as John Thornton characterized it, the while he shook Buck back and forth and cursed him lovingly.
For two days and nights Buck never left camp, never let Thornton out of his sight. He followed him about at his work, watched him while he ate, saw him into his blankets at night and out of them in the morning. But after two days the call in the forest began to sound more imperiously than ever. Buck’s restlessness came back on him, and he was haunted by recollections of the wild brother, and of the smiling land beyond the divide and the run side by side through the wide forest stretches. Once again he took to wandering in the woods, but the wild brother came no more; and though he listened through long vigils, the mournful howl was never raised.
He began to sleep out at night, staying away from camp for days at a time; and once he crossed the divide at the head of the creek and went down into the land of timber and streams. There he wandered for a week, seeking vainly for fresh sign of the wild brother, killing his meat as he travelled and travelling with the long, easy lope that seems never to tire. He fished for salmon in a broad stream that emptied somewhere into the sea, and by this stream he killed a large black bear, blinded by the mosquitoes while likewise fishing, and raging through the forest helpless and terrible. Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused the last latent remnants of Buck’s ferocity. And two days later, when he returned to his kill and found a dozen wolverenes quarrelling over the spoil, he scattered them like chaff; and those that fled left two behind who would quarrel no more.
The blood-longing became stronger than ever before. He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived. Because of all this he became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicated itself like a contagion to his physical being. It advertised itself in all his movements, was apparent in the play of every muscle, spoke plainly as speech in the way he carried himself, and made his glorious furry coat if anything more glorious. But for the stray brown on his muzzle and above his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ran midmost down his chest, he might well have been mistaken for a gigantic wolf, larger than the largest of the breed. From his St. Bernard father he had inherited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother who had given shape to that size and weight. His muzzle was the long wolf muzzle, save that it was larger than the muzzle of any wolf; and his head, somewhat broader, was the wolf head on a massive scale.
His cunning was wolf cunning, and wild cunning; his intelligence, shepherd intelligence and St. Bernard intelligence; and all this, plus an experience gained in the fiercest of schools, made him as formidable a creature as any that roamed the wild. A carnivorous animal, living on a straight meat diet, he was in full flower, at the high tide of his life, overspilling with vigor and virility. When Thornton passed a caressing hand along his back, a snapping and crackling followed the hand, each hair discharging its pent magnetism at the contact. Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, was keyed to the most exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a perfect equilibrium or adjustment. To sights and sounds and events which required action, he responded with lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as a husky dog could leap to defend from attack or to attack, he could leap twice as quickly. He saw the movement, or heard sound, and responded in less time than another dog required to compass the mere seeing or hearing. He perceived and determined and responded in the same instant. In point of fact the three actions of perceiving, determining, and responding were sequential; but so infinitesimal were the intervals of time between them that they appeared simultaneous. His muscles were surcharged with vitality, and snapped into play sharply, like steel springs. Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant, until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and pour forth generously over the world.
“Never was there such a dog,” said John Thornton one day, as the partners watched Buck marching out of camp.
“When he was made, the mould was broke,” said Pete.
“Py jingo! I t’ink so mineself,” Hans affirmed.
They saw him marching out of camp, but they did not see the instant and terrible transformation which took place as soon as he was within the secrecy of the forest. He no longer marched. At once he became a thing of the wild, stealing along softly, cat-footed, a passing shadow that appeared and disappeared among the shadows. He knew how to take advantage of every cover, to crawl on his belly like a snake, and like a snake to leap and strike. He could take a ptarmigan from its nest, kill a rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid air the little chipmunks fleeing a second too late for the trees. Fish, in open pools, were not too quick for him; nor were the beaver, mending their dams, too wary. He killed to eat, not from wantonness; but he preferred to eat what he killed himself. So a lurking humor ran through his deeds, and it was his delight to steal upon the squirrels, and, when he all but had them, to let them go, chattering in mortal fear to the tree-tops.
As the fall of the year came on, the moose appeared in greater abundance, moving slowly down to meet the winter in the lower and less rigorous valleys. Buck had already dragged down a stray part-grown calf; but he wished strongly for larger and more formidable quarry, and he came upon it one day on the divide at the head of the creek. A band of twenty moose had crossed over from the land of streams and timber, and chief among them was a great bull. He was in a savage temper, and, standing over six feet from the ground, was as formidable an antagonist as even Buck could desire. Back and forth the bull tossed his great palmated antlers, branching to fourteen points and embracing seven feet within the tips. His small eyes burned with a vicious and bitter light, while he roared with fury at sight of Buck.
From the bull’s side, just forward of the flank, protruded a feathered arrow-end, which accounted for his savageness. Guided by that instinct which came from the old hunting days of the primordial world, Buck proceeded to cut the bull out from the herd. It was no slight task. He would bark and dance about in front of the bull, just out of reach of the great antlers and of the terrible splay hoofs which could have stamped his life out with a single blow. Unable to turn his back on the fanged danger and go on, the bull would be driven into paroxysms of rage. At such moments he charged Buck, who retreated craftily, luring him on by a simulated inability to escape. But when he was thus separated from his fellows, two or three of the younger bulls would charge back upon Buck and enable the wounded bull to rejoin the herd.
There is a patience of the wild—dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself—that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and it belonged to Buck as he clung to the flank of the herd, retarding its march, irritating the young bulls, worrying the cows with their half-grown calves, and driving the wounded bull mad with helpless rage. For half a day this continued. Buck multiplied himself, attacking from all sides, enveloping the herd in a whirlwind of menace, cutting out his victim as fast as it could rejoin its mates, wearing out the patience of creatures preyed upon, which is a lesser patience than that of creatures preying.
As the day wore along and the sun dropped to its bed in the northwest (the darkness had come back and the fall nights were six hours long), the young bulls retraced their steps more and more reluctantly to the aid of their beset leader. The down-coming winter was harrying them on to the lower levels, and it seemed they could never shake off this tireless creature that held them back. Besides, it was not the life of the herd, or of the young bulls, that was threatened. The life of only one member was demanded, which was a remoter interest than their lives, and in the end they were content to pay the toll.
As twilight fell the old bull stood with lowered head, watching his mates—the cows he had known, the calves he had fathered, the bulls he had mastered—as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fading light. He could not follow, for before his nose leaped the merciless fanged terror that would not let him go. Three hundredweight more than half a ton he weighed; he had lived a long, strong life, full of fight and struggle, and at the end he faced death at the teeth of a creature whose head did not reach beyond his great knuckled knees.
From then on, night and day, Buck never left his prey, never gave it a moment’s rest, never permitted it to browse the leaves of trees or the shoots of young birch and willow. Nor did he give the wounded bull opportunity to slake his burning thirst in the slender trickling streams they crossed. Often, in desperation, he burst into long stretches of flight. At such times Buck did not attempt to stay him, but loped easily at his heels, satisfied with the way the game was played, lying down when the moose stood still, attacking him fiercely when he strove to eat or drink.
The great head drooped more and more under its tree of horns, and the shambling trot grew weak and weaker. He took to standing for long periods, with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped limply; and Buck found more time in which to get water for himself and in which to rest. At such moments, panting with red lolling tongue and with eyes fixed upon the big bull, it appeared to Buck that a change was coming over the face of things. He could feel a new stir in the land. As the moose were coming into the land, other kinds of life were coming in. Forest and stream and air seemed palpitant with their presence. The news of it was borne in upon him, not by sight, or sound, or smell, but by some other and subtler sense. He heard nothing, saw nothing, yet knew that the land was somehow different; that through it strange things were afoot and ranging; and he resolved to investigate after he had finished the business in hand.
At last, at the end of the fourth day, he pulled the great moose down. For a day and a night he remained by the kill, eating and sleeping, turn and turn about. Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his face toward camp and John Thornton. He broke into the long easy lope, and went on, hour after hour, never at loss for the tangled way, heading straight home through strange country with a certitude of direction that put man and his magnetic needle to shame.
As he held on he became more and more conscious of the new stir in the land. There was life abroad in it different from the life which had been there throughout the summer. No longer was this fact borne in upon him in some subtle, mysterious way. The birds talked of it, the squirrels chattered about it, the very breeze whispered of it. Several times he stopped and drew in the fresh morning air in great sniffs, reading a message which made him leap on with greater speed. He was oppressed with a sense of calamity happening, if it were not calamity already happened; and as he crossed the last watershed and dropped down into the valley toward camp, he proceeded with greater caution.
Three miles away he came upon a fresh trail that sent his neck hair rippling and bristling, It led straight toward camp and John Thornton. Buck hurried on, swiftly and stealthily, every nerve straining and tense, alert to the multitudinous details which told a story—all but the end. His nose gave him a varying description of the passage of the life on the heels of which he was travelling. He remarked the pregnant silence of the forest. The bird life had flitted. The squirrels were in hiding. One only he saw,—a sleek gray fellow, flattened against a gray dead limb so that he seemed a part of it, a woody excrescence upon the wood itself.
As Buck slid along with the obscureness of a gliding shadow, his nose was jerked suddenly to the side as though a positive force had gripped and pulled it. He followed the new scent into a thicket and found Nig. He was lying on his side, dead where he had dragged himself, an arrow protruding, head and feathers, from either side of his body.
A hundred yards farther on, Buck came upon one of the sled-dogs Thornton had bought in Dawson. This dog was thrashing about in a death-struggle, directly on the trail, and Buck passed around him without stopping. From the camp came the faint sound of many voices, rising and falling in a sing-song chant. Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found Hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine. At the same instant Buck peered out where the spruce-bough lodge had been and saw what made his hair leap straight up on his neck and shoulders. A gust of overpowering rage swept over him. He did not know that he growled, but he growled aloud with a terrible ferocity. For the last time in his life he allowed passion to usurp cunning and reason, and it was because of his great love for John Thornton that he lost his head.
The Yeehats were dancing about the wreckage of the spruce-bough lodge when they heard a fearful roaring and saw rushing upon them an animal the like of which they had never seen before. It was Buck, a live hurricane of fury, hurling himself upon them in a frenzy to destroy. He sprang at the foremost man (it was the chief of the Yeehats), ripping the throat wide open till the rent jugular spouted a fountain of blood. He did not pause to worry the victim, but ripped in passing, with the next bound tearing wide the throat of a second man. There was no withstanding him. He plunged about in their very midst, tearing, rending, destroying, in constant and terrific motion which defied the arrows they discharged at him. In fact, so inconceivably rapid were his movements, and so closely were the Indians tangled together, that they shot one another with the arrows; and one young hunter, hurling a spear at Buck in mid air, drove it through the chest of another hunter with such force that the point broke through the skin of the back and stood out beyond. Then a panic seized the Yeehats, and they fled in terror to the woods, proclaiming as they fled the advent of the Evil Spirit.
And truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate, raging at their heels and dragging them down like deer as they raced through the trees. It was a fateful day for the Yeehats. They scattered far and wide over the country, and it was not till a week later that the last of the survivors gathered together in a lower valley and counted their losses. As for Buck, wearying of the pursuit, he returned to the desolated camp. He found Pete where he had been killed in his blankets in the first moment of surprise. Thornton’s desperate struggle was fresh-written on the earth, and Buck scented every detail of it down to the edge of a deep pool. By the edge, head and fore feet in the water, lay Skeet, faithful to the last. The pool itself, muddy and discolored from the sluice boxes, effectually hid what it contained, and it contained John Thornton; for Buck followed his trace into the water, from which no trace led away.
All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed restlessly about the camp. Death, as a cessation of movement, as a passing out and away from the lives of the living, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was dead. It left a great void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void which ached and ached, and which food could not fill, At times, when he paused to contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he forgot the pain of it; and at such times he was aware of a great pride in himself,—a pride greater than any he had yet experienced. He had killed man, the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang. He sniffed the bodies curiously. They had died so easily. It was harder to kill a husky dog than them. They were no match at all, were it not for their arrows and spears and clubs. Thenceforward he would be unafraid of them except when they bore in their hands their arrows, spears, and clubs.
Night came on, and a full moon rose high over the trees into the sky, lighting the land till it lay bathed in ghostly day. And with the coming of the night, brooding and mourning by the pool, Buck became alive to a stirring of the new life in the forest other than that which the Yeehats had made, He stood up, listening and scenting. From far away drifted a faint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus of similar sharp yelps. As the moments passed the yelps grew closer and louder. Again Buck knew them as things heard in that other world which persisted in his memory. He walked to the centre of the open space and listened. It was the call, the many-noted call, sounding more luringly and compellingly than ever before. And as never before, he was ready to obey. John Thornton was dead. The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound him.
Hunting their living meat, as the Yeehats were hunting it, on the flanks of the migrating moose, the wolf pack had at last crossed over from the land of streams and timber and invaded Buck’s valley. Into the clearing where the moonlight streamed, they poured in a silvery flood; and in the centre of the clearing stood Buck, motionless as a statue, waiting their coming. They were awed, so still and large he stood, and a moment’s pause fell, till the boldest one leaped straight for him. Like a flash Buck struck, breaking the neck. Then he stood, without movement, as before, the stricken wolf rolling in agony behind him. Three others tried it in sharp succession; and one after the other they drew back, streaming blood from slashed throats or shoulders.
This was sufficient to fling the whole pack forward, pell-mell, crowded together, blocked and confused by its eagerness to pull down the prey. Buck’s marvellous quickness and agility stood him in good stead. Pivoting on his hind legs, and snapping and gashing, he was everywhere at once, presenting a front which was apparently unbroken so swiftly did he whirl and guard from side to side. But to prevent them from getting behind him, he was forced back, down past the pool and into the creek bed, till he brought up against a high gravel bank. He worked along to a right angle in the bank which the men had made in the course of mining, and in this angle he came to bay, protected on three sides and with nothing to do but face the front.
And so well did he face it, that at the end of half an hour the wolves drew back discomfited. The tongues of all were out and lolling, the white fangs showing cruelly white in the moonlight. Some were lying down with heads raised and ears pricked forward; others stood on their feet, watching him; and still others were lapping water from the pool. One wolf, long and lean and gray, advanced cautiously, in a friendly manner, and Buck recognized the wild brother with whom he had run for a night and a day. He was whining softly, and, as Buck whined, they touched noses.
Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred, came forward. Buck writhed his lips into the preliminary of a snarl, but sniffed noses with him, Whereupon the old wolf sat down, pointed nose at the moon, and broke out the long wolf howl. The others sat down and howled. And now the call came to Buck in unmistakable accents. He, too, sat down and howled. This over, he came out of his angle and the pack crowded around him, sniffing in half-friendly, half-savage manner. The leaders lifted the yelp of the pack and sprang away into the woods. The wolves swung in behind, yelping in chorus. And Buck ran with them, side by side with the wild brother, yelping as he ran.
And here may well end the story of Buck. The years were not many when the Yeehats noted a change in the breed of timber wolves; for some were seen with splashes of brown on head and muzzle, and with a rift of white centring down the chest. But more remarkable than this, the Yeehats tell of a Ghost Dog that runs at the head of the pack. They are afraid of this Ghost Dog, for it has cunning greater than they, stealing from their camps in fierce winters, robbing their traps, slaying their dogs, and defying their bravest hunters.
Nay, the tale grows worse. Hunters there are who fail to return to the camp, and hunters there have been whom their tribesmen found with throats slashed cruelly open and with wolf prints about them in the snow greater than the prints of any wolf. Each fall, when the Yeehats follow the movement of the moose, there is a certain valley which they never enter. And women there are who become sad when the word goes over the fire of how the Evil Spirit came to select that valley for an abidingplace.
In the summers there is one visitor, however, to that valley, of which the Yeehats do not know. It is a great, gloriously coated wolf, like, and yet unlike, all other wolves. He crosses alone from the smiling timber land and comes down into an open space among the trees. Here a yellow stream flows from rotted moose-hide sacks and sinks into the ground, with long grasses growing through it and vegetable mould overrunning it and hiding its yellow from the sun; and here he muses for a time, howling once, long and mournfully, ere he departs.
But he is not always alone. When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.
“ H? Wot I say? I spik true w’en I say dat Buck two devils.” 
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