Wuthering Heights / Грозовой перевал. Уровень 3

I was sick exceedingly, and dizzy, and faint. So I was compelled to accept lodgings under his roof. He told Zillah to give me a glass of brandy, and then passed on to the inner room. She condoled with me on my sorry predicament, and ushered me to bed.

Chapter III

She led me upstairs and recommended to hide the candle and not make noise. Her master has odd ideas about the room she will put me in. I asked the reason. She did not know, she answered: she had only lived there a year or two; and they had many strange things here.

So I fastened my door and glanced round for the bed. The whole furniture consisted of a chair, a clothes-press, and a large oak case, with squares windows near the top. I put my candle on the shelf and felt secure against the vigilance of Heathcliff, and everyone else.

The shelf had books on it; and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small – Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton.

Catherine's library was select, though not altogether for a legitimate purpose: scarcely one chapter had escaped a pen-and-ink commentary. Some were detached sentences; other parts took the form of a regular diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand. At the top of an extra page I was greatly amused to behold an excellent caricature of my friend Joseph, – rudely, yet powerfully sketched.

'An awful Sunday. I wish my father were back again. Hindley is a detestable creature – his conduct to Heathcliff is horrible – H. and I are going to rebel – we took our initiatory step this evening.

'All day was flooding with rain; we could not go to church, so we prayed in the barn! On Sunday evenings we played, and did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners.

'“You forget you have a master here,” says the tyrant. “I'll crash the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. Oh, boy! was that you? Frances darling, pull his hair as you go by: I heard him snap his fingers.”

Frances pulled his hair heartily, and then went and seated herself on her husband's knee, and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense – foolish behaviour.