"I did not know whether to resent this language or pursue my explanation; but he seemed so powerfully affected that I took pity and proceeded with my dreams.... Heathcliff gradually fell back into the shelter of the bed, as I spoke; finally sitting down almost concealed behind it. I guessed, however, by his irregular and intercepted breathing, that he struggled to vanquish an excess of violent emotion. Not liking to show him that I had heard the conflict, I continued my toilette rather noisily ... and soliloquised on the length of the night. 'Not three o'clock yet! I could have taken oath it had been six. Time stagnates here: we must surely have retired to rest at eight!'
"'Always at nine in winter, and rise at four,' said my host, suppressing a groan; and, as I fancied, by the motion of his arm's shadow, dashing a tear from his eyes. 'Mr. Lockwood,' he added, 'you may go into my room: you'll only be in the way, coming downstairs so early.... Take the candle and go where you please. I shall join you directly. Keep out of the yard, though, the dogs are unchained; and the house—Juno mounts sentinel there, and—nay, you can only ramble about the steps and passages. But, away with you! I'll come in two minutes.'
"I obeyed, so far as to quit the chamber; when, ignorant where the narrow lobbies led, I stood still, and was witness, involuntarily, to a piece of superstition on the part of my landlord which belied oddly his apparent sense. He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears. 'Come in! come in!' he sobbed, 'Cathy, do come! Oh, my heart's darling! hear me this time, Catharine, at last!' The spectre showed a spectre's ordinary caprice: it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the light.
"There was such anguish in the gush of grief that accompanied this raving, that my compassion made me overlook its folly, and I drew off, half angry to have listened at all, and vexed at having related my ridiculous nightmare, since it produced that agony; though why was beyond my comprehension."
Mr. Lockwood got no clue to the mystery at 'Wuthering Heights'; and later on returned to Thrushcross Grange, to fall ill of a lingering fever. During his recovery he heard the history of his landlord, from his housekeeper, who had been formerly an occupant of 'Wuthering Heights,' and after that, for many years, the chief retainer at Thrushcross Grange, where young Mrs. Heathcliff used to live when she still was Catharine Linton.
"Do you know anything of Mr. Heathcliff's story?" said Mr. Lockwood to his housekeeper, Nelly Dean.
"It's a cuckoo's, sir," she answered.
It is at this point that the history of 'Wuthering Heights' commences, that violent and bitter history of the "little dark thing harboured by a good man to his bane," carried over the threshold, as Christabel lifted Geraldine, out of pity for the weakness which, having grown strong, shall crush the hand that helped it; carried over the threshold, as evil spirits are carried, powerless to enter of themselves, and yet no evil demon, only a human soul lost and blackened by tyranny, injustice and congenital ruin. The story of 'Wuthering Heights,' is the story of Heathcliff. It begins with the sudden journey of the old squire, Mr. Earnshaw, to Liverpool one summer morning at the beginning of harvest. He had asked the children each to choose a present, "only let it be little, for I shall walk there and back, sixty miles each way:" and the son Hindley, a proud, high-spirited lad of fourteen, had chosen a fiddle; six-year-old Cathy, a whip, for she could ride any horse in the stable; and Nelly Dean, their humble playfellow and runner of errands, had been promised a pocketful of apples and pears. It was the third night since Mr. Earnshaw's departure, and the children, sleepy and tired, had begged their mother to let them sit up a little longer—yet a little longer—to welcome their father, and see their new presents. At last—just about eleven o'clock—Mr. Earnshaw came back, laughing and groaning over his fatigue; and opening his greatcoat, which he held bundled up in his arms, he cried:
"'See here, wife! I was never so beaten with anything in my life: but you must e'en take it as a gift of God; though it's as dark almost as if it came from the devil.'