Chapter M: E. Braddon (3)

Paulina Home's father was obliged to travel to recruit his health, and her mother being dead, Mrs. Bretton had offered to take temporary charge of the child.

During the two months Paulina stayed with us, the one member of the household who reconciled her to absence from her father was John Graham Bretton, Mrs. Bretton's only child, a handsome, whimsical youth of sixteen. He began by treating her with mock seriousness as a person of consideration, and before long was more than the Grand Turk in her estimation; indeed, when a letter came from her father on the Continent, asking that his little girl might join him there, we wondered how she would take the news. I found her in the drawing-room engaged with a picture-book.

"Miss Snowe," said she, "this is a wonderful book. It was given me by Graham. It tells of distant countries."

"Polly," I interrupted, "should you like to travel?"

"Not just yet," was the prudent answer; "but perhaps when I am grown a woman I may travel with Graham."

"But would you like to travel now if your papa was with you?"

"What is the good of talking in that silly way?" said she. "What is papa to you? I was just beginning to be happy."

Then I told her of the letter, and the tidings kept her serious the whole day. When Graham came home in the evening, she whispered, as she heard him in the hall: "Tell him by-and-by; tell him I am going."

But Graham, who was preoccupied about some school prize, had to be told twice before the news took proper hold of his attention. "Polly going?" he said. "What a pity! Dear little Mouse, I shall be sorry to lose her; she must come to us again."

On going to bed, I found the child wide awake, and in what she called "dreadful misery!"

"Paulina," I said, "you should not grieve that Graham does not care for you so much as you care for him. It must be so."

Her questioning eyes asked why.

"Because he is a boy and you are a girl; he is sixteen and you are only six; his nature is strong and gay, and yours is otherwise."

"But I love him so much. He should love me a little."

"He does. He is fond of you; you are his favourite."

"Am I Graham's favourite?"

"Yes, more than any little child I know."

The assurance soothed her, and she smiled in her anguish. As I warmed the shivering, capricious little creature in my arms I wondered how she would battle with life, and bear its shocks, repulses, and humiliations.

_II.--Madame Beck's School_

The next eight years of my life brought changes. My own household and that of the Brettons suffered wreck. My friends went abroad and were lost sight of, and I, after a period of companionship with a woman of fortune, found myself, at her death, with fifteen pounds in my pocket looking for a new place. Then it was that I saw mentally within reach what I had never yet beheld with my bodily eyes--I saw London.

When I awoke there next morning, my spirit shook its always fettered wings half loose. I had a feeling as if I were at last about to taste life. In that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah's gourd. I wandered whither chance might lead in a still ecstasy of freedom and enjoyment.

That evening I formed a project of crossing to a continental port, and finding a vessel was about to start, I joined her at once in the river. When the packet sailed at sunrise, I found the only passenger on board to whom I cared to speak--and who, indeed, insisted on speaking to me--was a girl of seventeen on her way to school in the city of Villette. Miss Ginevra Fanshawe carelessly ran on with a full account of herself, her school at Madame Beck's, her poverty at home, her education by her godfather, De Bassompièrre, who lived in France, her want of accomplishments--except that she could talk, play, and dance--and the need for her to marry a rather elderly gentleman with cash.

It was this irresponsible talk, no doubt, that led me, in the absence of any other leading, to make Villette my destination. On my arrival there, an English gentleman, young, distinguished, and handsome, observing my inability to make myself understood at the bureau where the diligence stopped, inquired kindly if I had any friends in the city, and on my replying that I had not, gave me the address of such an inn as I wanted, and personally directed me part of the way. Even then, however, I failed in the gloom to find the inn, and was becoming quite exhausted, when over the door of a house, loftier by a storey than those around it, I saw a brass plate with the inscription, "Pensionnat de Demoiselles," and, beneath, the name, "Madame Beck." Providence said: "Stop here; this is your inn." I rang the door-bell.

"May I see Madame Beck?" I inquired of the servant who opened the door. As I spoke in English I was admitted without a moment's hesitation.

I sat, turning hot and cold, in a glittering salon for a quarter of an hour, and then a voice said: "You ayre Engliss?"

The question came from a motherly, dumpy little woman in a large shawl, a wrapping gown, a clean, trim nightcap, and shod with the shoes of silence.

As I told my story, through a mistress who had been summoned to translate the speech of Albion, I thought the tale won madame's ear, though never a gleam of sympathy crossed her countenance. A man's step was heard in the vestibule, hastily proceeding to the outer door.

"Who goes out now?" demanded Madame Beck, listening to the tread.

"M. Paul Emanuel," replied the teacher.

"The very man! Call him."

He entered: a small, dark, and square man, in spectacles.

"_Mon cousin_," began madame, "read that countenance."

The little man fixed on me his spectacles, a gathering of the brows seeming to say that a veil would be no veil to him.

"Do you need her services?" he asked.

"I could do with them," said Madame Beck.

"Engage her." And with a _ban soir_ this sudden arbiter of my destiny vanished.

Madame Beck possessed high administrative powers. She ruled a hundred and twenty pupils, four teachers, eight masters, six servants and three children, and managed the pupils' parents and friends to perfection, without apparent effort. "Surveillance," "espionage"--these were the watchwords of her system. She knew what honesty was, and liked it--when it did not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and interest. Wise, firm, faithless, secret, crafty, passionless, watchful and inscrutable--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be desired?

Not a soul in all Madame Beck's house, from the scullion to the directress herself, but was above being ashamed of a lie; they thought nothing of it.

Here Miss Ginevra Fanshawe was a thriving pupil. She had a considerable range of acquaintances outside the school, for Mrs. Cholmondeley, her chaperon, a gay, fashionable lady, took her to evening parties at the houses of her acquaintances. Soon I discovered by hints that ardent admiration, perhaps genuine love, was at the command of this pretty and charming, but by no means refined, girl. She called her suitor "Isidore," and bragged about the vehemence of his attachment. I asked her if she loved him in return.

"He is handsome; he loves me to distraction; and so I am amused," was the reply.

"But if he loves you, and it comes to nothing in the end, he will be miserable."

"Of course he will break his heart. I should be disappointed if he didn't."

"Do try to get a clear idea of the state of your own mind," I said, "for to me it really seems as chaotic as a rag-bag."

"It is something in this fashion. He thinks far more of me than I find it convenient to be, while I am more at ease with you, you old cross- patch, you who know me to be coquettish and ignorant and fickle."

"You love M. Isidore far more than you think or will avow."

"No. I danced with a young officer the other night whom I love a thousand times more than he. Colonel Alfred de Hamal suits me far better. _Vive les joies et les plaisirs_!"

It was as English teacher that I was engaged at Madame Beck's school, but the annual fête brought me into prominence in another capacity. The programme included a dramatic performance, with pupils and teachers for actors, and this was given under the superintendence of M. Paul Emanuel. I was dressed a couple of hours before anyone else, and reading in my classroom, the door was flung open, and in came M. Paul with a burst of execrable jargon: "Mees, play you must; I am planted here."

"What can I do for you?" I inquired.

"Play you must. I will not have you shrink, or frown, or make the prude. Let us thrust to the wall all reluctance."

What did the little man mean?

"Listen!" he said. "The case shall be stated, and you shall answer me 'Yes' or 'No.' Louise Vanderkelkov has fallen ill--at least, so her ridiculous mother asserts. She is charged with a rôle; without that rôle the play stopped. Englishwomen are either the best or the worst of their sex. I apply to an Englishwoman to save me. What is her answer--'Yes,' or 'No'?"

Seeing in his vexed, fiery and searching eye an appeal behind its menace, my lips dropped the word "Oui."

His rigid countenance relaxed with a quiver of content; then he went on:

"Here is the book. Here is your rôle. You must withdraw." He conveyed me to the attic, locked me in, and took away the key.

What I felt that successful night, and what I did, I no more expected to feel and do than to be lifted in a trance to the seventh heaven. A keen relish for dramatic expression revealed itself as part of my nature. But the strength of longing must be put by; and I put it by, and fastened it in with the lock of a resolution which neither time nor temptation has since picked.

It was at this school fête that I discovered the identity of Miss Fanshawe's M. Isidore. She whispered to me, after the play: "Isidore and Alfred de Hamal are both here!" The latter I found was a straight-nosed, correct-featured little dandy, nicely dressed, curled, booted, and gloved; and Isidore was the manly English Dr. John, who attended the pupils of the school, and was none other than the gentleman whose directions to an hotel I had failed to follow on the night of my arrival in Villette. And the puppet, the manikin--a mere lackey for Dr. John, his valet, his foot-boy, was the favoured admirer of Ginevra Fanshawe!

_III.--Old Friends are Best_

During the long vacation I stayed at the school, and, in the absence of companionship and the sedative of work, suffered such agonising depression as led to physical illness, until one evening, after wandering aimlessly in the city, I fell fainting as I tried to reach the porch of a great church. When I recovered consciousness, I found myself in a room that smiled "Auld lang syne" out of every nook.

Where was I? The furniture was that with which I had been so intimate in the drawing-room of my godmother's house at Bretton. Nay, there, on the linen of my bed, were my godmothers initials "L.L.B."; and there was the portrait that used to hang over the mantelpiece in the breakfast-room in the old house at Bretton. I audibly pronounced the name--"Graham!"

"Graham!" echoed a sudden voice at my bedside. "Do you want Graham?"

She was little changed; something sterner, something more robust, but it was my godmother, Mrs. Bretton.

"How was I found, madam?"

"My son shall tell you by and by," said she. "I am told you are an English teacher in a foreign school here."

Before evening I was downstairs, and seated in a corner, when Graham arrived home, and entered with the question: "How is your patient, mamma?"

At Mrs. Bretton's invitation, I came forward to speak for myself where he stood at the hearth, a figure justifying his mother's pride.

"Much better," I said calmly; "much better, I thank you Dr. John."

For this tall young man, this host of mine, was Dr. John, and I had been aware of his identity for some time.

Ere we had sat ten minutes, I caught the eye of Mrs. Bretton fixed steadily on me, and at last she asked, "Tell me, Graham, of whom does this young lady remind you."

"Dr. John has had so much to do and think of," said I, seeing how it must end, "that it never occurred to me as possible that he should recognise Lucy Snowe."

"Lucy Snowe! I thought so! I knew it!" cried Mrs. Bretton, as she stepped across the hearth and kissed me. And I wondered if Mrs. Bretton knew at whose feet her idolised son had laid his homage.

_IV.--A Cure for First Love_

The Brettons, who had regained some of their fortune, lived in a château outside Villette, a course further warranted by Dr. John's professional success. In the months, that followed I heard much of Ginevra. He thought her so fair, so good, so innocent, and yet, though love is blind, I saw sometimes a subtle ray sped sideways from his eye that half led me to think his professed persuasion of Miss Fanshawe's naïveté was in part assumed.

One morning my godmother decreed that we should go with Graham to a concert that night, at which the most advanced pupils of the conservatoire were to perform. There, in the suite of the British embassy, was Ginevra Fanshawe, seated by the daughter of an English peer. I noticed that she looked quite steadily at Dr. John, and then raised a glass to examine his mother, and a minute or two afterwards laughingly whispered to her neighbour.

"Miss Fanshawe is here," I whispered. "Have you noticed her?"

"Oh yes," was the reply; "and I happen to know her companion, who is a proud girl, but not in the least insolent; and I doubt whether Ginevra will have gained ground in her estimation by making a butt of her neighbours."

"What neighbours?"

"Myself and my mother. As for me, it is very natural; but my mother! I never saw her ridiculed before. Through me she could not in ten years have done what in a moment she has done through my mother."

Never before had I seen so much fire and so little sunshine in Dr. John's blue eyes.

"My mother shall not be ridiculed with my consent, or without my scorn," he added. "Mother," said he to her later, "You are better to me than ten wives." And when we were out in the keen night air, he said to himself: "Thank you, Miss Fanshawe. I am glad you laughed at my mother. That sneer did me a world of good."

_V.--Reunion Completed_

One evening in December Dr. Bretton called to take me to the theatre in place of his mother, who had been prevented by an arrival. In the course of the performance a cry of "Fire!" rang out, and a panic ensued. Graham remained quite cool until he saw a young girl struck from her protector's arms and hurled under the feet of the crowd. Then he rushed forward, thrust back the throng with the assistance of the gentleman--a powerful man, though grey-haired--and bore the girl into the fresh night, I following him closely.

"She is very light," he said; "like a child."

"I am not a child! I am a person of seventeen!" responded his burden, demurely.

Her father's carriage drove up, and Graham, having introduced himself as an English doctor, we drove to the hotel where father and daughter were staying in handsome apartments. The injuries were not dangerous, and the father, after earnestly expressing his obligations to Graham, asked him to call the next day.

When next I visited the Bretton's château I found an intruder in the room I had occupied during my illness.

"Miss de Bassompièrre, I pronounced, recognising the rescued lady, whose name I had heard on the night of the accident.

"No," was the reply. "Not Miss de Bassompièrre to you." Then, as I seemed at fault, she added: "You have forgotten, then, that I have sat on your knee, been lifted in your arms, even shared your pillow. I am Paulina Mary Home de Bassompièrre."

I often visited Mary de Bassompièrre with pleasure. That young lady had different moods for different people. With her father she was even now a child. With me she was serious and womanly. With Mrs. Bretton she was docile and reliant. With Graham she was shy--very shy. At moments she tried to be cold, and, on occasion, she endeavoured to shun him. Even her father noticed this demeanour in her, and asked her what her old friend had done.

"Nothing," she replied; "but we are grown strange to each other."

I became apprised of the return of M. de Bassompièrre and Paulina, after a few weeks' absence in Paris, by seeing them riding before me in a quiet boulevard with Dr. Bretton. How animated was Graham's face! How true, yet how retiring the joy it expressed! They parted. He passed me at speed, hardly feeling the earth he skimmed, and seeing nothing on either hand.

It was after this that she made me her confession of love, and of fear lest her father should be grieved.

"I wish papa knew! I do wish papa knew!" began now to be her anxious murmur; but it was M. de Bassompièrre who first broached the subject of his daughter's affections, and it was to me that he introduced it. She came into the room while we talked and Graham followed.

"Take her, John Bretton," he said, "and may God deal with you as you deal with her!"

_VI.--A Professor's Love-Story_

The pupils from the schools of the city were assembled for the yearly prize distribution--a ceremony followed by an oration from one of the professors. I think I was glad when M. Paul appeared behind the crimson desk, fierce and frank, dark and candid, testy and fearless, for then I knew that neither formalism nor flattery would be the doom of the audience.

On Monsieur's birthday it was the habit of the scholars to present him with flowers, and I had worked a beaded watch-chain, and enclosed it in a sparkling shell-box, with his initials graved on the lid. He entered that day in a mood that made him as good as a sunbeam, and each pupil presented her bouquet, till he was hidden at his desk behind a pile of flowers. I waited. Then he demanded thrice, in tragic tones: "Is that all?" The effect was ludicrous, and the time for my presentation had passed. Thereupon he fell, with furious abuse, upon the English, and particularly English women. But I presented the chain to him later, and that day closed for us both with a wordless content, so full was he of friendliness.

The professor's care for me took curious forms. He haunted my desk with unseen gift-bringing--the newest books, the correction of exercises, the concealment of bonbons, of which he was fond.

One day he asked me whether, if I were his sister, I should always be content to stay with a brother such as he. I said I believed I should. He continued: "If I were to go beyond seas for two or three years, should you welcome me on my return?"

"Monsieur, how could I live in the interval?" was my reply.

The explanation of that question soon came. He had, it seemed, to sail to Basseterre, in Guadeloupe, to attend to a friend's business interests. For what I felt there was no help, and how could I help feeling?

Of late he had spent hours with me, with temper soothed, with eye content, with manner home-like and mild. The mutual understanding was settling and fixing. And when the time came for him to say good-bye, we rambled forth into the city. He talked of his voyage. What did I propose to do in his absence? He did not like leaving me at Madame Beck's--I should be so desolate.

We were now returning from our walk, when, passing a small but pleasant and neat abode in a clean _faubourg_, he took a key from his pocket, opened, and entered. "_Voici!_" he cried, and put a prospectus in my hand. "Externat de demoiselles. Numéro 7, Faubourg Clotilde. Directrice, Mademoiselle Lucy Snowe."

"Now," said he, "you shall live here and have a school. You shall employ yourself while I am away; you shall think of me; you shall mind your health and happiness for my sake, and when I come back----"

I touched his hand with my lips. Royal to me had been its bounty.

And now three years are past. M. Emanuel's return is fixed. He is to be with me ere the mists of November come. My school flourishes; my house is ready.

But the skies hang full and dark--a wrack sails from the west. Peace, peace, Banshee--"keening" at every window. The storm did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks. Peace, be still! Oh, a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice; but when the sun returned, his light was night to some!

Here pause. Enough is said. Trouble no kind heart. Leave sunny imaginations hope. Let them picture union and a happy life.

* * * * *

EMILY BRONTË

Wuthering Heights

"That chainless soul," Emily Jane Brontë, was born at
Thornton, Yorkshire, England, on August 30, 1818, and died at
Haworth on December 19, 1848. She will always have a place in
English literature by reason of her one weird, powerful,
strained novel, "Wuthering Heights," and a few poems. Emily
Brontë, like her sister Charlotte, was educated at Cowan
School and at Brussels. For a time she became a governess, but
it seemed impossible for her to live away from the fascination
of the Yorkshire moors, and she went home to keep house at the
Haworth Parsonage, while her sisters taught. Two months after
the publication of "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte, that is, in
December, 1847, "Wuthering Heights," by Emily, and "Agnes
Grey," by Anne, the third sister in this remarkable trio, were
issued in one volume. The critics, who did not discover these
books were by women, suggested persistently that "Wuthering
Heights" must be an immature work by Currer Bell (Charlotte).
A year after the publication of her novel Emily died, unaware
of her success in achieving a lasting, if restricted, fame.
She was extraordinarily reserved, sensitive, and wayward, and
lived in an imagined world of her own, morbidly influenced, no
doubt, by the vagaries of her worthless brother Branwell. That
she had true genius, allied with fine strength of intellect
and character, is the unanimous verdict of competent
criticism, while it grieves over unfulfilled possibilities.

_I.--A Surly Brood_

"Mr. Heathcliff?"

A nod was the answer.

"Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, sir."

"Walk in." But the invitation, uttered with closed teeth, expressed the sentiment "Go to the deuce!" And it was not till my horse's breast fairly pushed the barrier that he put out his hand to unchain it. I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself as he preceded me up the causeway, calling, "Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood's horse; and bring up some wine."

Joseph was an old man, very old, though hale and sinewy. "The Lord help us!" he soliloquised in an undertone as he relieved me of my horse.

Wuthering Heights, Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling, is a farmhouse on an exposed and stormy edge, its name being significant of atmospheric tumult. Its owner is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman, with erect and handsome figure, but morose demeanour. One step from the outside brought us into the family living-room, the recesses of which were haunted by a huge liver-coloured bitch pointer, with a swarm of squealing puppies, and other dogs. As the bitch sneaked wolfishly to the back of my legs I attempted to caress her, an action that provoked a long, guttural growl.

"You'd better let the dog alone," growled Mr. Heathcliff in unison, as he checked her with a punch of his foot. "She's not accustomed to be spoiled."

As Joseph was mumbling indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, and gave no sign of ascending, his master dived down to him, leaving me _vis-à-vis_ with the ruffianly bitch and half a dozen four-footed fiends that suddenly broke into a fury, while I parried off the attack with a poker and called aloud for assistance.

"What the devil is the matter?" asked Heathcliff, as he returned.

"What the devil, indeed!" I muttered. "You might as well leave a stranger with a brood of tigers!"

"They won't meddle with persons who touch nothing," he remarked. "The dogs are right to be vigilant. Take a glass of wine."

Before I went home I determined to volunteer another visit to my sulky landlord, though evidently he wished for no repetition of my intrusion.

* * * * *

Yesterday I again visited Wuthering Heights, my nearest neighbours to Thrushcross Grange. On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. As I knocked for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled, vinegar- faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn, and shouted to me.

"What are ye for? T' maister's down i' t' fowld. There's nobbut t' missis. I'll hae no hend wi't," muttered the head, vanishing.

Then a young man, without coat and shouldering a pitchfork, hailed me to follow him, and showed me into the apartment where I had been formerly received with a gruff "Sit down; he'll be in soon."

In the room sat the "missis," motionless and mute. She was slender, scarcely past girlhood, with the most exquisite little face I have ever had the pleasure of beholding; and her eyes, had they been agreeable in expression, would have been irresistible. But the only sentiment they evinced hovered between scorn and a kind of desperation. As for the young man who had brought me in, he slung on his person a shabby jacket, and, erecting himself before the fire, gazed down on me from the corner of his eyes as if there was some mortal feud unavenged between us. The entrance of Heathcliff relieved me from an uncomfortable state.

I found in the course of the tea which followed that the lady was the widow of Heathcliff's son, and that the rustic youth who sat down to the meal with us was Hareton Earnshaw. Now, before passing the threshold, I had noticed over the principal door, among a wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys, the name "Hareton Earnshaw" and the date "1500." Evidently the place had a history.

The snow had fallen so deeply since I entered the house that return across the moor in the dusk was impossible.

Spending that night at Wuthering Heights on an old-fashioned couch that filled a recess, or closet, in a disused chamber, I found, scratched on the paint many times, the names "Catherine Earnshaw," "Catherine Heathcliff," and again "Catherine Linton." There were many books in the room in a dilapidated state, and, being unable to sleep, I examined them. Some of them bore the inscription "Catherine Earnshaw, her book"; and on the blank leaves and margins, scrawled in a childish hand, was a regular diary. I read: "Hindley is detestable. Heathcliff and I are going to rebel.... How little did I dream Hindley would ever make me cry so! Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won't let him sit or eat with us any more."

When I slept I was harrowed by nightmare, and next morning I gladly left the house; and, piloted by my landlord across the billowy white ocean of the moor, I reached the Grange benumbed with cold and as feeble as a kitten from fatigue.

When my housekeeper, Mrs. Nelly Dean, brought in my supper that night I asked her why Heathcliff let the Grange and preferred living in a residence so much inferior.

"He's rich enough to live in a finer house than this," said Mrs. Dean; "but he's very close-handed. Young Mrs. Heathcliff is my late master's daughter--Catherine Linton was her maiden name, and I nursed her, poor thing. Hareton Earnshaw is her cousin, and the last of an old family."

"The master, Heathcliff, must have had some ups and downs 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. And Hareton Earnshaw has been cast out like an unfledged dunnock."

I asked Mrs. Dean to bring her sewing, and continue the story. This she did, evidently pleased to find me companionable.

_II.--The Story Runs Backward_

Before I came to live here (began Mrs. Dean), I was almost always at Wuthering Heights, because my mother nursed Mr. Hindley Earnshaw, that was Hareton's father, and I used to run errands and play with the children. One day, old Mr. Earnshaw, Hareton's grandfather, went to Liverpool, and promised Hindley and Cathy, his son and daughter, to bring each of them a present. He was absent three days, and at the end of that time brought home, bundled up in his arms under his great-coat, a dirty, ragged, black-haired child, big enough both to walk and talk, but only able to talk gibberish nobody could understand. He had picked it up, he said, starving and homeless in the streets of Liverpool. Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors, but Mr. Earnshaw told her to wash it, give it clean things, and let it sleep with the children. The children's presents were forgotten. This was how Heathcliff, as they called him, came to Wuthering Heights.

Miss Cathy and he soon became very thick; but Hindley hated him. He was a patient, sullen child, who would stand blows without winking or shedding a tear. From the beginning he bred bad feeling in the house. Old Earnshaw took to him strangely, and Hindley regarded him as having usurped his father's affections. As for Heathcliff, he was insensible to kindness. Cathy, a wild slip, with the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile, and the lightest foot in the parish, was much too fond of Heathcliff.

Old Mr. Earnshaw died quietly in his chair by the fireside one October evening.

Mr. Hindley, who had been to college, came home to the funeral, and set the neighbours gossiping right and left, for he brought a wife with him. What she was and where she was born he never informed us. She evinced a dislike to Heathcliff, and drove him to the company of the servants, but Cathy clung to him, and the two promised to grow up together as rude as savages. Once Hindley shut them out for the night and they came to Thrushcross Grange, where the Lintons took Cathy in, but would not have anything to do with Heathcliff, the Spanish castaway, as they called him. She stayed five weeks with the Lintons, and became very friendly with the children, Edgar and Isabella, and when she came back was a dignified little person, and quite a beauty.

Soon after, Hindley's son, Hareton, was born, the mother died, and the child fell wholly into my hands, for the father grew desperate in his sorrow, and gave himself up to reckless dissipation. His treatment of Heathcliff now was enough to make a fiend of a saint, and daily the lad became more savagely sullen. I could not half-tell what an infernal house we had, till at last nobody decent came near us, except that Edgar Linton called to see Cathy, who at fifteen was the queen of the countryside--a haughty and headstrong creature.

One day after Edgar Linton had been over from the Grange, Cathy came into the kitchen to me and said, "Nelly, will you keep a secret for me? To-day Edgar Linton has asked me to marry him, and I've given him an answer. I accepted him, Nelly. Be quick and say whether I was wrong."

"First and foremost," I said sententiously, "do you love Mr. Edgar?"

"I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches, and every word he says. I love his looks, and all his actions, and him entirely and altogether. There now!"

"Then," said I, "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 my soul and in my heart I'm convinced I'm wrong! I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there, my brother, 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. Nelly, I dreamed I was in heaven, but 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."

Ere this speech was ended, Heathcliff, who had been lying out of sight on a bench by the kitchen wall, stole out. He had heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and he had heard no further.

That night, while a storm rattled over the heights in full fury, Heathcliff disappeared. Catherine suffered uncontrollable grief, and became dangerously ill. When she was convalescent she went to Thrushcross Grange. But Edgar Linton, when he married her, three years subsequent to his father's death, and brought her here to the Grange, was the happiest man alive. I accompanied her, leaving little Hareton, who was now nearly five years old, and had just begun to learn his letters.

On a mellow evening in September, I was coming from the garden with a basket of apples I had been gathering, when, as I approached the kitchen door, I heard a voice say, "Nelly, is that you?"

Something stirred in the porch, and, moving nearer, I saw a tall man, dressed in dark clothes, with dark hair and face.

"What," I cried, "you come back?"

"Yes, Nelly. You needn't be so disturbed. I want one word with your mistress."

I went in, and explained to Mr. Edgar and Catherine who was waiting below.

"Oh, Edgar darling," she panted, flinging her arms round his neck, "Heathcliff's come back--he is!"

"Well, well," he said, "don't strangle me for that. There's no need to be frantic. Try to be glad without being absurd!"

When Heathcliff came in, she seized his hands and laughed like one beside herself.

It seemed that he was staying at Wuthering Heights, invited by Mr. Earnshaw! When I heard this I had a presentiment that he had better have remained away.

Later, we learned from Joseph that Heathcliff had called on Earnshaw, whom he found sitting at cards, had joined in the play, and, seeming plentifully supplied with money, had been asked by his ancient persecutor to come again in the evening. He then offered liberal payment for permission to lodge at the Heights, which Earnshaw's covetousness made him accept.

Heathcliff now commenced visiting Thrushcross Grange, and gradually established his right to be expected. A new source of trouble sprang up in an unexpected form--Isabella Linton evincing a sudden and irresistible attraction towards Heathcliff. At that time she was a charming young lady of eighteen. I tried to persuade her to banish him from her thoughts.

"He's a bird of bad omen, miss," I said, "and no mate for you. How has he been living? How has he got rich? Why is he staying at Wuthering Heights in the house of the 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."

"You are leagued with the rest," she replied, "and I'll not listen to your slanders." The antipathy of Mr. Linton towards Heathcliff reached a point at last at which he called on his servants one day to turn him out of the Grange, whereupon Heathcliff's revenge took the form of an elopement with Linton's sister. Six weeks later I received a letter of bitter regret from Isabella, asking me distractedly whether I thought her husband was a man or a devil, and how I had preserved the common sympathies of human nature at Wuthering Heights, where they had returned.

On receiving this letter, I obtained permission from Mr. Linton to go to the Heights to see his sister, and Heathcliff, on meeting me, urged me to secure for him an interview with Catherine.

"Nelly," said he, "you know as well as I do that for every thought she spends on Linton she spends a thousand on me. If he loved her 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."

Well, I argued, and refused, but in the long run he forced me to agree to put a missive into Mrs. Linton's hand.

When he met her, I saw that he could hardly bear, for downright agony, to look into her face, for he was stricken with the conviction that she was fated to die.

"Oh, Cathy, how can I bear it?" was the first sentence he uttered.

"You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff," was her reply. "You have killed me and thriven on it, I think."

"Are you possessed with a devil," he asked, "to talk in that manner to me when you are dying? You know you lie to say I have killed you, and you know that I could as soon forget my existence as forget you. Is it not sufficient that while you are at peace, I shall be in the torments of hell?"

"I shall not be at peace," moaned Catherine.

"Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart? You loved me. What right had you to leave me?"

"Let me alone!" sobbed Catherine. "I've done wrong, and I'm dying for it! Forgive me!"

That night was born the Catherine you, Mr. Lockwood, saw at the Heights, and her mother's spirit was at home with God.

When in the morning I told Heathcliff, who had been watching near all night, he dashed his head against the knotted trunk of the tree by which he stood and howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast, as he besought her ghost to haunt him. "Be with me always--take any form!" he cried. "Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"

Life with Heathcliff becoming impossible to Isabella, she left the neighbourhood, never to revisit it, and lived near London; and there her son, whom she christened Linton, was born a few months after her escape. He was an ailing, peevish creature. When Linton was twelve, or a little more, and Catherine thirteen, Isabella died, and the boy was brought to Thrushcross Grange. Hindley Earnshaw drank himself to death about the same time, after mortgaging every yard of his land for cash; and Heathcliff was the mortgagee. So Hareton Earnshaw, who should have been the first gentleman in the neighbourhood, was reduced to dependence on his father's enemy, in whose house he lived, ignorant that he had been wronged.

The motives of Heathcliff now became clear. Under the influence of a passionate but calculating revenge, allied with greed, he was planning the destruction of the Earnshaw family, and the union of the Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange estates. To this end, having brought his weakly son home to the Heights and terrorised him into a pitiable slavery, he schemed a marriage between him and young Catherine Linton, who was induced to accept the arrangement through sympathy with her cousin, and the hope of removing him from the paralysing influence of his father. The marriage was almost immediately followed by the death of both Catherine's father and her boyish husband, who, it was afterwards found, had been coaxed or threatened into bequeathing all his property to his father. Thus ended Mrs. Dean's story of how the strangely assorted occupants of Wuthering Heights had come together, my landlord Heathcliff, the disinherited, poor Hareton Earnshaw, and Catherine Heathcliff, who had been Catherine Linton and the daughter of Catherine Earnshaw. I propose riding over to Wuthering Heights to inform my landlord that I shall spend the next six months in London, and that he may look out for another tenant for the Grange.

_III.--The Story Runs Forward_

Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty, and 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. Hareton Earnshaw unchained the gate for me. The fellow is as handsome a rustic as need be seen, but he does his best, apparently, to make the least of his advantages. Catherine, who was preparing vegetables for a meal, looked more sulky and less spirited than when I had seen her first.

"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."

I approached her, pretending to desire a view of the garden, and dropped Mrs. Dean's note on 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. 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; but later he pulled out the letter, and flung it on the floor as ungraciously as he could. Catherine perused it eagerly, and then asked, "Does Ellen like you?"

"Yes, very well," I replied hesitatingly.

Whereupon she became more communicative, and told me how dull she was now Heathcliff had taken her books away.

When Heathcliff came in, looking restless and anxious, he sent her to the kitchen to get her dinner with Joseph; and with the master of the house, grim and saturnine, and Hareton absolutely dumb, I made a cheerless meal, and bade adieu early.

* * * * *

Next September, when going north for shooting, a sudden impulse seized me to visit Thrushcross Grange and pass a night under my own roof, for the tenancy had not yet expired. When I reached the Grange before sunset I found a girl knitting under the porch, and an old woman reclining on the house-steps, smoking a meditative pipe.

"Is Mrs. Dean within?" I demanded.

"Mistress Dean? Nay!" she answered. "She doesn't bide here; shoo's up at th' Heights."

"Are you housekeeper, then?"

"Eea, aw keep th' house," 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. "Yah sud ha' sent word. They's nowt norther dry nor mensful abaht t' place!"

Leaving her scurrying about making preparations, I climbed the stony by-road that branches off to Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. On reaching it I had neither to climb the gate nor to knock--it yielded to my hand. "This is an improvement," I thought. I noticed, too, a fragrance of flowers wafted on the air from among the homely fruit-trees.

"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."

"Contrary, then," answered another in deep but softened tones. "And now kiss me for minding so well."

The male speaker 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. So, not to interrupt Hareton Earnshaw and Catherine Heathcliff, I went round to the kitchen, where my old friend Nelly Dean sat sewing and singing a song.

Mrs. Dean jumped to her feet as she recognised me. "Why, bless you, Mr. Lockwood!" she exclaimed. "Pray step in! Have you walked from Gimmerton?"

"No, from the Grange," I replied; "and while they make me a lodging room there I want to finish my business with your master."

"What business, sir?" said Nelly.

"About the rent," I answered.

"Oh, then it is Catherine you must settle with, or rather me, as she has not learned to arrange her affairs yet."

I looked surprised.

"Ah! You have not heard of Heathcliff's death, I see," she continued.

"Heathcliff dead!" I exclaimed. "How long ago?"

"Three months since; but sit down, and I'll tell you all about it."

"I was summoned to Wuthering Heights," she said, "within a fortnight of your leaving us, and I went gladly for Catherine's sake. Mr. Heathcliff, who grew more and more disinclined to society, almost banished Earnshaw from his apartment, and was tired of seeing Catherine--that was the reason why I was sent for--and the two young people were thrown perforce much in each other's company in the house, and presently Catherine began to make it clear to her obstinate cousin that she wished to be friends. The intimacy ripened rapidly, and, Mr. Lockwood, on their wedding day there won't be a happier woman in England than myself. Joseph was the only objector, and he appealed to Heathcliff against 'yon flaysome graceless quean, that's witched our lad wi' her bold een and her forrad ways.' But after a burst of passion at the news, Mr. Heathcliff suddenly calmed down and said to me, 'Nelly, there is a strange change approaching; I'm in its shadow.'

"Soon after that he took to wandering alone, in a state approaching distraction. He could not rest; he could not eat; and he would not see the doctor. One morning as I walked 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.' And so it was, for when I entered the chamber his face and throat were washed with rain, the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still--dead and stark. I called up Joseph. 'Eh, what a wicked 'un he looks, girning at death,' exclaimed the old man, and then he fell on his knees and returned thanks that the ancient Earnshaw stock were restored to their rights.

"I shall be glad when they leave the Heights for the Grange," concluded Mrs. Dean.

"They are going to the Grange, then?"

"Yes, as soon as they are married; and that will be on New Year's Day."

* * * * *

ROBERT BUCHANAN

The Shadow of the Sword

Robert Buchanan, poet, novelist, and playwright, was born on
Aug. 18, 1841, at Caverswall, Staffordshire, England, the son
of a poor journeyman tailor from Ayrshire, in Scotland, who
wrote poetry, and wandered about the country preaching
socialism of the Owen type, afterwards editing a Glasgow
journal. Owing, perhaps, in part to his very unconventional
training, Robert Buchanan entered on life with a strange
freshness of vision. Nothing in ordinary human life seemed
common or mean to him, and this sense of wonder, combined with
a power of judgment much steadier than his father's, made him
a poet of considerable genius. "Undertones," published in
1863, and "Idylls and Legends of Inverburn," which appeared
two years later, made him famous. The same qualities which he
displayed in his poetry Buchanan exhibited in his earliest and
best novels. "The Shadow of the Sword," published in 1876, was
originally conceived as a poem, and it still remains one of
the best of modern English prose romances. In his latter years
Robert Buchanan, tortured by the long and painful illness of
his beautiful and gentle wife, wrote a considerable amount of
work with no literary merit; but this does not diminish the
value of his best and earliest work, which undoubtedly
entitles him to a place of importance in English literature.
He died on June 10, 1901.

_I.--The King of the Conscripts_

"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant, in a voice that rang like a trumpet through the length of the town hall.

No one answered. The crowd of young Kromlaix men looked at each other in consternation. Was the handsomest, the strongest, and the most daring lad in their village a coward? It was the dark year of 1813, when Napoleon was draining France of all its manhood. Even the only sons of poor widowed women, such as Rohan Gwenfern was, were no longer exempted from conscription. Having lost half a million men amid the snows of Russia, Napoleon had called for 200,000 more soldiers, and the little Breton fishing village of Kromlaix had to provide twenty-five recruits.

"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant again.

The mayor rose up behind the ballot-box on the large table, about which the villagers were gathered, and looked around in vain for the splendid figure of the young fisherman.

"Where is your nephew?" he said to Corporal Derval, in an angry voice.

Derval, one of Napoleon's veterans, who had been pensioned after losing his leg at Austerlitz, looked at his pretty niece, Marcelle, with a strange pallor on his furrowed, sunburnt face.

"Rohan was too ill to come," said Marcelle, with a troubled look in her sweet grey eyes. "I will draw in his name."

"Very well, my pretty lass," said the mayor, his grim face softening into a smile as he looked at the beautiful girl, "you shall draw for him, and bring him luck."

Marcelle's hand trembled as she put it into the ballot-box. She let it stay there so long that some of the soldiers began to laugh. But the village women, gathered in a dense crowd at the back of the hall, gazed at her with tears in their eyes. They knew what she was doing. She was praying that she might draw a lucky number for her lover, Rohan. Twenty-five conscripts were wanted, and those who drew a paper numbered twenty-six or upwards were free.

"Come, come, my dear!" said the mayor, stroking his moustache, and nodding encouragingly at Marcelle.

She slowly drew forth a paper, and handed it to her uncle, who opened it, read it with a stare, and uttered his usual expletive. "Soul of a crow!" in an awstricken whisper.

"Read it, corporal!" said the mayor, while Marcelle looked wildly at her uncle.

"It is incredible!" said Corporal Derval, handing the paper to the sergeant, with the look of amazement still on his face.

"Rohan Gwenfern--one!" shouted the sergeant, while Marcelle clung to her uncle, and hid her face upon his arm.

Rohan Gwenfern, who had taken a solemn oath that he would never go forth to slay his fellow-men at the bidding of Napoleon, whom he regarded as a horrible, murderous monster, found himself, when he returned to Kromlaix late that evening, in the sorry position of King of the Conscripts. He was a young man who had led a very solitary life, but solitude, instead of making him morbid, had strengthened his natural feelings of pity and affection. His immense physical strength had never been exerted for any evil, and even in the roughest wrestling matches he had never fought brutally or cruelly.

He certainly rejoiced in his splendid powers of body; but he had the gentleness of soul of a poetic mind, as well as the magnanimity that often goes with great strength. There was, indeed, something lion-like about him as he strode up to the door of his cottage, with his mane of yellow hair floating over his broad brows and falling on his shoulders. An eager crowd was waiting for him, and when he appeared, they all shouted.

"Here he is at last!" cried a voice, which he recognised as that of Mikel Grallon. "Three cheers for the King of the Conscripts!"