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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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