While leading the way upstairs, Zillah recommended that I hide my candle and remain quiet. Her master had a strange objection to anyone staying in this particular chamber, and he never allowed anyone to lodge there willingly. When I asked the reason, she confessed she did not know; she had only lived there for two years, and there were so many "queer goings-on" at Wuthering Heights that she had learned to stop being curious.
Too exhausted to be curious myself, I fastened my door and looked around for the bed. The room was nearly empty, containing only a chair, a wardrobe, and a large oak case with small squares cut out near the top, resembling windows. Upon approaching this structure, I realized it was a singular kind of old-fashioned bed, designed as a small, private closet. I climbed inside with my light, pulled the panels shut, and finally felt secure against the vigilance of Heathcliff.
In one corner of the window ledge, I found a few mildewed books. The ledge itself was covered with writing scratched into the paint—a single name repeated in various styles: Catherine Earnshaw, sometimes changing to Catherine Heathcliff, and then to Catherine Linton.
Feeling a sense of listless boredom, I leaned my head against the window and stared at the names until my eyes closed. However, I had not rested for five minutes when a glare of white letters seemed to jump out from the dark. Rousing myself, I discovered that my candle had fallen onto one of the antique volumes, filling the small space with the smell of burning leather.
I put out the flame and, still feeling a lingering nausea from the cold, opened the damaged book. It was an old Testament with a name inscribed on the fly-leaf: “Catherine Earnshaw, her book,” dated twenty-five years ago. I examined the other books and found that Catherine’s "library" had been well-used, though not for its intended purpose. Scarcely a chapter had escaped her pen-and-ink commentary, which covered every blank margin. Some were short sentences, while others formed a regular diary written in a childish hand.
“An awful Sunday,” one paragraph began. “I wish my father were back. Hindley is a detestable substitute—his conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious. H. and I are going to rebel.”
I read on, deciphering her faded handwriting. She described a miserable, rainy day when they were forbidden from going to church. Instead, Joseph had forced them to sit in the cold attic for a three-hour service while Hindley and his wife stayed warm by the fire downstairs. Catherine wrote of how Hindley, now the master of the house, treated Heathcliff like a servant, threatening to turn him out if they played together. Her diary painted a vivid picture of a house divided by cruelty and religious fanaticism.
I eventually began to nod off, my eyes wandering from the manuscript to the printed text of a religious discourse by a man named Jabez Branderham. Before long, I fell into a deep sleep, likely brought on by the combination of bad tea and a bad temper.
I began to dream almost immediately. I thought it was morning and I was walking home through deep snow with Joseph as my guide. We were traveling to hear Jabez Branderham preach a sermon on the theme of "Seventy Times Seven." In the dream, we reached a crowded chapel where the preacher delivered an interminable sermon divided into four hundred and ninety parts, each discussing a different sin.
I grew incredibly weary. I writhed, yawned, and pinched myself to stay awake. Finally, when the preacher reached the "Four hundred and ninety-first" sin, I could endure no more. I stood up and denounced him as a hypocrite. The entire assembly rose, waving their walking sticks, and rushed at me. In the chaos, the chapel resounded with the sound of sticks rapping against wood—a sound that eventually woke me.
To my great relief, I realized the noise was merely the branch of a fir tree brushing against my window in the wind. I dozed off again, but my next dream was even more terrifying.
In this second nightmare, I remembered I was in the oak bed and heard the wind howling outside. The branch continued to rattle against the glass, annoying me so much that I resolved to silence it. I thought I reached out to open the window, but the hook was stuck. Impatiently, I pushed my knuckles through the glass and reached out to seize the branch. Instead, my fingers closed on the small, ice-cold hand of a child!
A wave of intense horror came over me. I tried to pull my arm back, but the hand clung to it, and a melancholy voice sobbed, “Let me in—let me in!”
“Who are you?” I asked, struggling to free myself.
“Catherine Linton,” it replied. “I’ve come home; I lost my way on the moor!”
Terror made me cruel. Finding it impossible to shake the creature off, I pulled its wrist onto the broken glass and rubbed it back and forth until blood soaked the bedclothes. Still, the voice wailed, “Let me in!” and maintained its grip.
“How can I?” I cried. “Let me go, if you want me to let you in!”
The fingers relaxed. I snatched my hand back, piled the books against the hole in the glass, and blocked my ears. But the moment I listened again, the doleful cry was still there.
“Begone!” I shouted. “I’ll never let you in, even if you beg for twenty years!”
“It is twenty years,” mourned the voice. “I’ve been a waif for twenty years!”
There was a scratching sound outside, and the pile of books began to move. I let out a frantic yell of fright. To my confusion, I discovered the scream was real. Hasty footsteps approached the door, and someone pushed it open. I sat there shivering, wiping sweat from my forehead, as a light appeared.
“Is anyone here?” a voice whispered. It was Heathcliff.
I decided to reveal myself. I opened the panels of the bed, and the effect was dramatic. Heathcliff stood there in his shirt and trousers, his face as white as the wall. He was so startled that he dropped his candle.
“It’s only your guest, sir,” I called out. “I had a terrible nightmare and screamed in my sleep. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
“God confound you, Mr. Lockwood!” Heathcliff burst out, his voice trembling with suppressed emotion. “Who showed you into this room? I’ve a good mind to turn them out this instant!”
“It was Zillah,” I replied, getting out of bed and quickly dressing. “I suppose she wanted to prove the place was haunted. Well, she was right—it is swarming with ghosts! No one would thank you for a night in this den.”
“What do you mean?” Heathcliff asked, his expression shifting from anger to something like fear.
I told him about the dream of Catherine Linton, the child who claimed to have been wandering the earth for twenty years. As soon as I mentioned the name, Heathcliff’s face changed. He broke into a savage rage, ordering me to leave the room.
I hurried out, but I paused in the dark hallway. To my astonishment, I saw my host climb onto the bed and throw open the window. He burst into a passion of tears, sobbing into the snowy night, “Come in! Cathy, do come! Oh, my heart’s darling, hear me this time!”
The sight of his overwhelming grief was so painful that I felt a sudden pity for him, despite his earlier rudeness. I descended quietly to the kitchen, where I spent the remaining hours of the night by the dying fire, accompanied only by a cat.
At dawn, the household began to stir. Joseph came down first, followed by Hareton Earnshaw, who ignored me completely as he prepared to shovel the snow outside. I eventually moved into the main room, where Zillah was lighting the fire and the young Mrs. Heathcliff was reading.
Heathcliff soon appeared and immediately began a stormy argument with Zillah. He then turned his anger toward his daughter-in-law, calling her a "worthless jade" and mocking her for living on his charity.
“I’ll put my book away because you can make me,” she answered defiantly, “but I’ll do nothing else except what I please!”
Heathcliff raised his hand as if to strike her, and I quickly stepped forward to interrupt the dispute. Hostilities were suspended, but the atmosphere remained thick with resentment. I declined breakfast and, at the first gleam of daylight, prepared to leave.
My landlord offered to accompany me across the moor. It was fortunate he did, for the landscape had been transformed into a vast, white ocean. All landmarks—the stones and mounds I had seen the day before—were buried under the snow. Heathcliff frequently had to warn me to steer left or right to avoid the deep swamps that lay hidden beneath the drifts.
He left me at the entrance to Thrushcross Park, where we exchanged a brief, cold farewell. The final two miles to the Grange felt like ten. I lost my way among the trees and sank up to my neck in snow more than once. When I finally reached my house, the clock struck twelve; it had taken me four hours to walk four miles.
My servants rushed to welcome me, having feared I had perished in the storm. Too exhausted to speak, I dragged myself upstairs to my study. I sat by the fire, feeling as weak as a kitten, and watched the steam rise from my coffee, my mind still haunted by the icy hand and the mourning voice of the girl at the window.