Wuthering Heights

insane, I'd never see him again! You'll perhaps think me rather inclined to become so,« he added, making an effort to smile, »if I try to describe the thousand forms of past associations, and ideas he awakens, or embodies – But you'll not talk of what I tell you, and my mind is so eternally secluded in itself, it is tempting, at last, to turn it out to another.«
    »Five minutes ago, Hareton seemed a personification of my youth, not a human being – I felt to him in such a variety of ways, that it would have been impossible to have accosted him rationally.
    In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine connected him fearfully with her – That however which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least – for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree – filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women – my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!
    Well, Hareton's aspect was the ghost of my immortal love, of my wild endeavours to hold my right, my degradation, my pride, my happiness, and my anguish –
    But it is frenzy to repeat these thoughts to you; only it will let you know, why, with a reluctance to be always alone, his society is no benefit, rather an aggravation of the constant torment I suffer – and it partly contributes to render me regardless how he and his cousin go on together. I can give them no attention, any more.«
    »But what do you mean by a
change,
Mr. Heathcliff?« I said, alarmed at his manner, though he was neither in danger of losing his senses, nor dying, according to my judgment he was quite strong and healthy; and, as to his reason, from childhood, he had a delight in dwelling on dark things, and entertaining odd fancies – he might have had a monomania on the subject of his departed idol; but on every other point his wits were as sound as mine.
    »I shall not know that, till it comes,« he said, »I'm only half conscious of it now.«
    »You have no feeling of illness, have you?« I asked.
    »No, Nelly, I have not,« he answered.
    »Then, you are not afraid of death?« I pursued.
    »Afraid? No!« he replied. »I have neither a fear, nor a presentiment, nor a hope of death – Why should I? With my hard constitution, and temperate mode of living, and unperilous occupations, I ought to, and probably
shall
remain above ground, till there is scarcely a black hair on my head – And yet I cannot continue in this condition! – I have to remind myself to breathe – almost to remind my heart to beat! And it is like bending back a stiff spring ... it is by compulsion, that I do the slightest act, not prompted by one thought, and by compulsion, that I notice anything alive, or dead, which is not associated with one universal idea ... I have a single wish, and my whole being, and faculties are yearning to attain it. They have yearned towards it so long, and so unwaveringly, that I'm convinced it
will
be reached – and
soon
– because it has devoured my existence – I am swallowed in the anticipation of its fulfilment.
    My confessions have not relieved me – but, they may account for some, otherwise unaccountable phases of humour, which I show. O, God! It is a long fight, I wish it were over!«
    He began to pace the room, muttering terrible things to himself; till I was inclined to believe, as he said Joseph did, that conscience had turned his heart to an earthly hell – I wondered greatly how it would end.
    Though he seldom before had revealed this state of mind, even by looks, it was his habitual mood, I had no doubt: he asserted it himself – but, not a soul, from his general bearing would have conjectured the fact. You did not, when you saw him, Mr. Lockwood – and at the period of which I speak, he was just the same as then, only fonder of continued solitude, and perhaps still more laconic in company.
     
     
Chapter XXXIV
    For some days after that evening, Mr. Heathcliff shunned meeting us at meals; yet he would not consent, formally, to exclude Hareton and Cathy. He had an aversion to yielding so completely to his feelings, choosing, rather, to absent himself – And eating once in twenty-four hours seemed