Wuthering Heights

Snow had shut me in at Wuthering Heights for the night, and a servant quietly led me to a bedroom that her master did not want anyone to use.In it stood an old bed of dark oak, with tall panels that closed like the sides of a box around whoever lay inside.I set my candle on the wide ledge, and saw that the paint there was covered, over and over, with one name scratched into it: Catherine.

The name was written three ways — Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff, Catherine Linton — as if the girl who wrote it could not decide who she was.A few old books lay on the ledge, and their margins were full of faded handwriting: a kind of diary, kept years before by a girl named Catherine Earnshaw.I read the small, cramped lines until they blurred before my eyes, and then I fell asleep over the mouldy pages.

A fir branch was tapping and scraping at the window in the wind, and in my dream I got up to stop the noise.I thought I broke the glass and reached out to seize the branch, but my fingers closed instead on a small, ice-cold hand.A voice sobbed, "Let me in — let me in!", and a child's face, white with cold, looked at me through the dark glass.

"Who are you?" I asked, pulling to get free. "Catherine Linton," it answered. "I have come home. I lost my way on the moor."The little fingers held on, and the sobbing did not stop, and a helpless terror rose in me.In my fear I pulled the thin wrist hard against the broken glass until the hand let go; then I piled the books against the hole and stopped my ears.

My own cry woke me — and it had not been silent, for I heard quick steps outside, and Heathcliff came in holding a light, his hand shaking.Half ashamed, I told him the room was haunted, and that a ghost calling herself "Catherine Linton, or Earnshaw" had come to the window.To my astonishment he sank onto the bed and fought to control some strong feeling, then told me in a broken voice to leave the room.

As I went out I looked back and saw him climb onto the bed, wrench the window open, and burst into tears."Come in! Come in!" he sobbed. "Cathy, do come. Oh, do — once more! My heart's darling, hear me this time!" But only the snow and the wind replied.