Джейн Эйр / Jane Eyre
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‘Do you know me?’ asked Heathcliff, having satisfied himself that the limbs were all equally frail and feeble.
‘No,’ said Linton, with a gaze of vacant fear.
‘You’ve heard of me, I daresay?’
‘No,’ he replied again.
‘No! What a shame of your mother, never to waken your filial regard for me! You are my son, then, I’ll tell you; and your mother was a wicked slut to leave you in ignorance of the sort of father you possessed. Now, don’t wince, and colour up! Though it is something to see you have not white blood. Be a good lad; and I’ll do for you. Nelly, if you be tired you may sit down; if not, get home again. I guess you’ll report what you hear and see to the cipher at the Grange; and this thing won’t be settled while you linger about it.’
‘Well,’ replied I, ‘I hope you’ll be kind to the boy, Mr. Heathcliff, or you’ll not keep him long; and he’s all you have akin in the wide world, that you will ever know – remember.’
‘I’ll be very kind to him, you needn’t fear,’ he said, laughing. ‘Only nobody else must be kind to him: I’m jealous of monopolising his affection. And, to begin my kindness, Joseph, bring the lad some breakfast. Hareton, you infernal calf, begone to your work. Yes, Nell,’ he added, when they had departed, ‘my son is prospective owner of your place, and I should not wish him to die till I was certain of being his successor. Besides, he’s mine, and I want the triumph of seeing my descendant fairly lord of their estates; my child hiring their children to till their fathers’ lands for wages. That is the sole consideration which can make me endure the whelp: I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives! But that consideration is sufficient: he’s as safe with me, and shall be tended as carefully as your master tends his own. I have a room up-stairs, furnished for him in handsome style; I’ve engaged a tutor, also, to come three times a week, from twenty miles’ distance, to teach him what he pleases to learn. I’ve ordered Hareton to obey him: and in fact I’ve arranged everything with a view to preserve the superior and the gentleman in him, above his associates. I do regret, however, that he so little deserves the trouble: if I wished any blessing in the world, it was to find him a worthy object of pride; and I’m bitterly disappointed with the whey-faced, whining wretch!’
While he was speaking, Joseph returned bearing a basin of milk-porridge, and placed it before Linton: who stirred round the homely mess with a look of aversion, and affirmed he could not eat it. I saw the old man-servant shared largely in his master’s scorn of the child; though he was compelled to retain the sentiment in his heart, because Heathcliff plainly meant his underlings to hold him in honour.
‘Cannot ate it?’ repeated he, peering in Linton’s face, and subduing his voice to a whisper, for fear of being overheard. ‘But Maister Hareton nivir ate naught else, when he wer a little ’un; and what wer gooid enough for him’s gooid enough for ye, I’s rayther think!’ [163]
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Cannot ate it? But Maister Hareton nivir ate naught else, when he wer a little ’un; and what wer gooid enough for him’s gooid enough for ye, I’s rayther think! – Cannot eat it? But Master Hareton never ate anything else when he was a little one; and what was good enough for him is good enough for you, I rather think.
‘I sha’n’t eat it!’ answered Linton, snappishly. ‘Take it away.’
Joseph snatched up the food indignantly, and brought it to us.
‘Is there aught ails th’ victuals?’ he asked, thrusting the tray under Heathcliff’s nose.
‘What should ail them?’ he said.
‘Wah!’ answered Joseph, ‘yon dainty chap says he cannut ate ’em. But I guess it’s raight! His mother wer just soa – we wer a’most too mucky to sow t’ corn for makking her breead.’ [164]
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Wah! yon dainty chap says he cannut ate ’em. But I guess it’s raight! His mother wer just soa – we wer a’most too mucky to sow t’ corn for makking her breead. – What! that dainty chap says he cannot eat them. But I guess it’s right! His mother was just so – we were almost too mucky (dirty) to sow the corn for making her bread.
‘Don’t mention his mother to me,’ said the master, angrily. ‘Get him something that he can eat, that’s all. What is his usual food, Nelly?’
I suggested boiled milk or tea; and the housekeeper received instructions to prepare some. Come, I reflected, his father’s selfishness may contribute to his comfort. He perceives his delicate constitution, and the necessity of treating him tolerably. I’ll console Mr. Edgar by acquainting him with the turn Heathcliff’s humour has taken. Having no excuse for lingering longer, I slipped out, while Linton was engaged in timidly rebuffing the advances of a friendly sheep-dog. But he was too much on the alert to be cheated: as I closed the door, I heard a cry, and a frantic repetition of the words –
‘Don’t leave me! I’ll not stay here! I’ll not stay here!’
Then the latch was raised and fell: they did not suffer him to come forth. I mounted Minny, and urged her to a trot; and so my brief guardianship ended.
Chapter XXI
We had sad work with little Cathy that day: she rose in high glee, eager to join her cousin, and such passionate tears and lamentations followed the news of his departure that Edgar himself was obliged to soothe her, by affirming he should come back soon: he added, however, ‘if I can get him’; and there were no hopes of that. This promise poorly pacified her; but time was more potent; and though still at intervals she inquired of her father when Linton would return, before she did see him again his features had waxed so dim in her memory that she did not recognise him.
When I chanced to encounter the housekeeper of Wuthering Heights, in paying business visits to Gimmerton, I used to ask how the young master got on; for he lived almost as secluded as Catherine herself, and was never to be seen. I could gather from her that he continued in weak health, and was a tiresome inmate. She said Mr. Heathcliff seemed to dislike him ever longer and worse, though he took some trouble to conceal it: he had an antipathy to the sound of his voice, and could not do at all with his sitting in the same room with him many minutes together. There seldom passed much talk between them: Linton learnt his lessons and spent his evenings in a small apartment they called the parlour: or else lay in bed all day: for he was constantly getting coughs, and colds, and aches, and pains of some sort.
‘And I never know such a fainthearted creature,’ added the woman; ‘nor one so careful of hisseln. He will go on, if I leave the window open a bit late in the evening. Oh! it’s killing, a breath of night air! And he must have a fire in the middle of summer; and Joseph’s bacca-pipe is poison; and he must always have sweets and dainties, and always milk, milk for ever – heeding naught how the rest of us are pinched in winter; and there he’ll sit, wrapped in his furred cloak in his chair by the fire, with some toast and water or other slop on the hob to sip at; and if Hareton, for pity, comes to amuse him – Hareton is not bad-natured, though he’s rough – they’re sure to part, one swearing and the other crying. I believe the master would relish Earnshaw’s thrashing him to a mummy, if he were not his son; and I’m certain he would be fit to turn him out of doors, if he knew half the nursing he gives hisseln. But then he won’t go into danger of temptation: he never enters the parlour, and should Linton show those ways in the house where he is, he sends him up-stairs directly.’
I divined, from this account, that utter lack of sympathy had rendered young Heathcliff selfish and disagreeable, if he were not so originally; and my interest in him, consequently, decayed: though still I was moved with a sense of grief at his lot, and a wish that he had been left with us. Mr. Edgar encouraged me to gain information: he thought a great deal about him, I fancy, and would have run some risk to see him; and he told me once to ask the housekeeper whether he ever came into the village? She said he had only been twice, on horseback, accompanying his father; and both times he pretended to be quite knocked up for three or four days afterwards. That housekeeper left, if I recollect rightly, two years after he came; and another, whom I did not know, was her successor; she lives there still.
Time wore on at the Grange in its former pleasant way till Miss Cathy reached sixteen. On the anniversary of her birth we never manifested any signs of rejoicing, because it was also the anniversary of my late mistress’s death. Her father invariably spent that day alone in the library; and walked, at dusk, as far as Gimmerton kirkyard, where he would frequently prolong his stay beyond midnight. Therefore Catherine was thrown on her own resources for amusement. This twentieth of March was a beautiful spring day, and when her father had retired, my young lady came down dressed for going out, and said she asked to have a ramble on the edge of the moor with me: Mr. Linton had given her leave, if we went only a short distance and were back within the hour.