Wuthering Heights

back, it took the form of a regular diary.
    ‘An awful Sunday!’ it
commenced. ‘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!’
     
    I read a while then fell
into a deep sleep. I was awakened by an acorn branch tapping on the window,
something I always wanted. I reached through the broken pane to snap it off,
instead of which my hand closed on the fingers of a little ice-cold hand, a
nightmare of horrors came over me and I said, ‘Ahgggh!’ I had to clench the
cheeks of my bum to stop an emittance of solids. I tried to withdraw my hand
but the hand clung to it.
    ‘Let me in,’ sobbed a
voice.
    ‘Who are you?’ sobbed my
voice.
    ‘Catherine Linton, I’ve
come home.’
    I let go another ‘Ahgggh!’
    ‘I’d lost my way on the
moor.’
    ‘You wouldn’t like it in
here,’ I said. ‘They’re all bloody barmy.’
    As I ahggghed, I discerned
a child’s face looking in. ‘Let me in,’ she wailed.
    ‘Ahggh!’ Now I was
clenching the cheeks of my bottom to their maximum. I hit the little hand with
my boot and it withdrew taking my boot with it. Never mind, I still had one
left. ‘Begone,’ I cried, ‘before the sphincter gives way!’
    ‘Twenty years,’ mourned the
voice, ‘I’ve been a waif for twenty years.’
    ‘Happy Birthday,’ I sang.
    She was trying to get in! I
yelled aloud in a frenzy of fright. Footsteps approached.
    ‘Has anyone yelled in a
frenzy of fright?’ Heathcliff appeared holding a candle. ‘Is anyone here?’ he
said.
    ‘You are,’ I said.
    ‘So I am,’ he said,
grinding his teeth. I was still in the dark portion of the room. ‘Are you a
chimneysweep?’ he asked.
    ‘No, it is only your guest,
sir.’
    ‘I’ve never had a
chimneysweep as a guest before,’ he said, crushing his nails into his palms,
where they got stuck. I had to use a screwdriver to release them. He continued
to grind his teeth to subdue a maxillary convulsion.
    I told him, ‘Mr Heathcliff,
you can cure maxillary convulsions by taking Dr Clott’s Liquid Gum Nourisher.’
    He pretended not to hear by
putting his fingers in his ears and saying, ‘What?’ But the maxillary
convulsions had a result, when next he spoke several teeth shot out.
    ‘Who showed you to this
room?’
    ‘It was your servant,
Zillah,’ I replied, flinging myself to the floor and rapidly resuming my
clothing! ‘I suppose’, I said, ‘she wanted proof that the room was haunted at
my expense. Well, it came to a pound. Can I have it in cash?’ I asked. I told
him the moor was swarming with ghosts and goblins and the words of Bradford and
Bingley. ‘No one will thank you for a dose in such a den.’
    ‘No one has ever caught a
dose in this den,’ he said. ‘Look, lie down and finish your night, but for
Heaven’s sake don’t give any more yells in a frenzy of fright.’
    ‘But if the little fiend
had got in the window, she would have strangled me,’ I said. I grabbed my
throat and hung my tongue out to demonstrate.
    I then recalled the
association of Heathcliff and Catherine’s name in the book and I said so.
    ‘Zounds,’ he said. ‘How dare you talk like this under my roof!’
    ‘I can say it again in the
garden if you like,’ I said. He struck his forehead the very moment a fly had
landed flattening it. He fell back on my bed in the shadows.
    ‘Mr Lockwood,’ he said,
getting off the bed and putting one foot in the po, ‘Mr Lockwood, you may go
into my room, you’ll only be in the way here, and your yells in a frenzy of
fright have sent sleep to the devil for me. Here, take this candle and bowl of
porridge and wander where you please. Try Denmark.’ He was breathing very
heavily, you could hear it whistling and going clickity-click ‘all the fours’
down his nose.
    I quit the chamber, je
suis sorti de la chambre, but I got lost in the narrow lobbies, and I
seemed to arrive back where I started, outside my room, and himmel! I saw
Heathcliff, kneeling and sobbing through the broken window.
    ‘Come in!’ he sobbed. ‘Oh,
Cathy, my heart’s darling, come and bring the boot with you.’
    She who had spoken gave no
sign of being, but the snow and wind swirled blowing out my candle.
    I groped my way downstairs.
It was the first good grope I’d had for years. I arrived in the back kitchen
with a fire from which I relit my candle. My foot without the boot was
freezing. I took off my vest and covered it