Chapter III: Chapter XVI

Scene: An isolated homestead on Scene: An isolated homestead on
a winter's night, snow-wind a winter's night, snow-wind
blowing, storm threatening. blowing, storm threatening.

-------- --------

While leading me upstairs she Take care, young man
[Zillah, the stout housewife] [recommended "the herdsman's
recommended that I should hide wife"], that you fasten the door
the candle and not make a noise, well, ... whatever sound you
... they had so many queer hear stir not and look not out.
goings-on. The night will soon fall, ...
strange noises are often heard
He sleeps and is awakened by-- ... you might chance to hear, as
it were, a child cry, and on
The branch of a fir that touched opening the door to give it
my lattice.... I listened succour ... a shadowy goblin dog
doubtingly, ... I heard the might rush over the threshold;
gusty wind and the driving of or more awful still, if
the snow;... I heard also the something flapped, as with
firbough repeat its teasing wings, against the lattice, and
sound.... I ... endeavoured to then a raven or a white dove
unhasp the casement, ... flew in and settled on the
knocking my knuckles through the hearth, such a visitor would be
glass, and stretching an arm out a sure sign of misfortune.
to seize the ... branch; instead
of which my fingers closed on The stranger, left alone,
the fingers of a little ice-cold listens awhile to the muffled
hand.[28]... I tried to draw snow-wind.
back my arm, but the hand clung
to it and a melancholy voice
sobbed--"Let me in--let me in!"

... As it spoke, I discerned
obscurely a child's face looking
through the window.... Still it
wailed "Let me in!" and it
maintained its tenacious gripe,
almost maddening me with fear.

"How can I?" I said.... "Let
_me_ go, if you want me to let
you in." I stopped my ears to
exclude the lamentable prayer,
... 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."

In _Wuthering Heights_ Charlotte Brontë has worked the child-phantom into the story proper, setting it for the spirit of the departed Catherine, who as a child again (Method II., altering age of the character portrayed) seeks Heathcliffe. The building of the child-phantom in the plot of _Wuthering Heights_ created a peculiar state of affairs; but as we have seen by Charlotte Brontë's reference to it in the extract from _The Professor_, she was impressed by its possibilities of giving a weird spiritual atmosphere, and she did not extend the idea in _The Professor_. The substance of Charlotte Brontë's two versions of the child-phantom wailing outside a house for admittance is identical:--

_The Professor._ _Wuthering Heights._

Scene: An isolated homestead on a Scene: An isolated homestead on a
winter's night, snow-wind blowing, winter's night, snow-wind blowing,
storm threatening. Young stranger storm threatening. Young stranger
admonished by the good housewife admonished by the good housewife
that there are queer goings-on that there are queer goings-on
thereabouts. thereabouts.

Subjunctive Mood. Indicative Mood.

Something might brush against Something brushes against the
the lattice, and a phantom-child lattice, and a phantom-child
might wail outside for succour. wails outside for succour.
On opening to admit it an awful, On opening to admit it an awful,
supernatural incident might occur. supernatural incident occurs.

Thus we perceive the famous child-phantom incident in Chapter III. of _Wuthering Heights_ had its origin (1) in Montagu's lonely-house incident; (2) in Charlotte Brontë's awe of a child-apparition; (3) in Charlotte Brontë's Method II., alteration of age of character portrayed, by which Catherine the woman becomes a child again; and (4) in Charlotte Brontë's notion, as evidenced in _Shirley_, Chapter XXIV., that a loved dead one can "revisit those they leave"; can "come in the elements"; that "wind" could give "a path to Moor(e)"--Heath(cliffe), "passing the casement sobbing"; that the loved dead one could "haunt" the wind. These, then, we see were the notions in Charlotte Brontë's head responsible for Catherine's returning so sensationally to the abode of her lover as a child-spectre. For Catherine's love for Wuthering Heights was not simply because of the place and its moors, as so many writers have wrongly contended, but because it was associated with Heathcliffe.[29] Let my reader peruse again the "wailing child" passages I quote from _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ in Chapter II. of _The Key to the Brontë Works_.

Truly the testimony of Charlotte Brontë's child-phantom were alone the sign-manual that she and none other wrote _Wuthering Heights_.