Wuthering Heights

guarding him from one, and winning him the other, his endeavours to raise himself produced just the contrary result.
    »Yes, that's all the good 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 precluding further speech, he advanced hastily to the entrance, where I made way for him to pass. But, ere he had crossed the door- 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 twelvemonths 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 notebook 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 re-appeared, 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 bid 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 realization 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 hostler, 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 alias 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