The Three Brontes Part 19

The whole tremendous art of the book is in this wringing of strange and terrible harmony out of raging discord. It ends on a sliding cadence, soft as a sigh of peace only just conscious after pain.

"I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next the moor: the middle one grey and half-buried in heath; Edgar Linton's only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff's still bare.

"I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the gra.s.s, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

But that is not the real end, any more than Lockwood's arrival at Wuthering Heights is the beginning. It is only Lockwood recovering himself; the natural man's drawing breath after the pa.s.sing of the supernatural.

For it was not conceivable that the more than human love of Heathcliff and Catherine should cease with the dissolution of their bodies. It was not conceivable that Catherine, by merely dying in the fifteenth chapter, should pa.s.s out of the tale. As a matter of fact, she never does pa.s.s out of it. She is more in it than ever.

For the greater action of the tragedy is entirely on the invisible and immaterial plane; it is the pursuing, the hunting to death of an earthly creature by an unearthly pa.s.sion. You are made aware of it at the very beginning when the ghost of the child Catherine is heard and felt by Lockwood; though it is Heathcliff that she haunts. It begins in the hour after Catherine's death, upon Heathcliff's pa.s.sionate invocation: "'Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest so long as I am living! You said I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered _do_ haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts _have_ wandered on earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad! Only _do_ not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh G.o.d! it is unbearable! I _cannot_ live without my life! I _cannot_ live without my soul!'"

It begins and is continued through eighteen years. He cannot see her, but he is aware of her. He is first aware on the evening of the day she is buried. He goes to the graveyard and breaks open the new-made grave, saying to himself, "'I'll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I'll think it is the north wind that chills _me_; and if she be motionless, it is sleep.'" A sighing, twice repeated, stops him. "'I appeared to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleet-laden wind.

I knew no living thing in flesh and blood was by; but as certainly as you perceive the approach to some substantial body in the dark, though it cannot be discerned, so certainly I felt Cathy was there; not under me, but on the earth.... Her presence was with me; it remained while I refilled the grave, and led me home.'"

But she cannot get through to him completely, because of the fleshly body that he wears.

He goes up to his room, his room and hers. "'I looked round impatiently--I felt her by me--I could _almost_ see her, and yet I _could not_!... She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And since then, sometimes more and sometimes less, I've been the sport of that intolerable torture!... When I sat in the house with Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I walked on the moors I should meet her coming in. When I went from home, I hastened to return; she _must_ be somewhere at the Heights, I was certain! And when I slept in her chamber--I was beaten out of that. I couldn't lie there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she was either outside the window, or sliding back the panels, or entering the room, or even resting her darling head on the same pillow as she did when a child; and I must open my lids to see. And so I opened and closed them a hundred times a night--to be always disappointed! It racked me!... It was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of hair-breadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen years!'"

In all Catherine's appearances you feel the impulse towards satisfaction of a soul frustrated of its pa.s.sion, avenging itself on the body that betrayed it. It has killed Catherine's body. It will kill Heathcliff's; for it _must_ get through to him. And he knows it.

Heathcliff's brutalities, his cruelties, the long-drawn accomplishment of his revenge, are subordinate to this supreme inner drama, this wearing down of the flesh by the l.u.s.t of a remorseless spirit.

Here are the last scenes of the final act. Heathcliff is failing.

"'Nelly,' he says, 'there's a strange change approaching: I'm in its shadow at present. I take so little interest in my daily life, that I hardly remember to eat or drink. Those two who have left the room'"

(Catherine Linton and Hareton) "'are the only objects which retain a distinct material appearance to me.... Five minutes ago, Hareton seemed a personification of my youth, not a human being: I felt to him in such a variety of ways that it would have been impossible to have accosted him rationally. In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine connected him fearfully with her. That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least: for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags? In every cloud, in every tree--filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day--I am devoured with her image!

The most ordinary faces of men and women--my own features--mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her.'...

"'But what do you mean by a _change_, Mr. Heathcliff?' I said, alarmed at his manner....

"'I shall not know till it comes,' he said, 'I'm only half conscious of it now.'"

A few days pa.s.s. He grows more and more abstracted and detached. One morning Nelly Dean finds him downstairs, risen late.

"I put a basin of coffee before him. He drew it nearer, and then rested his arms on the table, and looked at the opposite wall, as I supposed, surveying one particular portion, up and down, with glittering, restless eyes, and with such eager interest that he stopped breathing during half a minute together....

"'Mr. Heathcliff! master!' I cried, 'don't, for G.o.d's sake stare as if you saw an unearthly vision.'

"'Don't, for G.o.d's sake, shout so loud,' he replied. 'Turn round, and tell me, are we by ourselves?'

"'Of course,' was my answer, 'of course we are.'

"Still, I involuntarily obeyed him, as if I were not quite sure. With a sweep of his hand he cleared a s.p.a.ce in front of the breakfast-things, and leant forward more at his ease.

"Now I perceived that he was not looking at the wall; for, when I regarded him alone, it seemed exactly that he gazed at something within two yards' distance. And, whatever it was, it communicated, apparently, both pleasure and pain in exquisite extremes: at least the anguished, yet raptured, expression of his countenance suggested that idea. The fancied object was not fixed: either his eyes pursued it with unwearied diligence, and, even in speaking to me, were never weaned away. I vainly reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food: if he stirred to touch anything in compliance with my entreaties, if he stretched his hand out to get a piece of bread, his fingers clenched before they reached it, and remained on the table, forgetful of their aim."

He cannot sleep; and at dawn of the next day he comes to the door of his room--Cathy's room--and calls Nelly to him. She remonstrates with him for his neglect of his body's health, and of his soul's.

"'Your cheeks are hollow, and your eyes bloodshot, like a person starving with hunger, and going blind with loss of sleep.'

"'It is not my fault that I cannot eat or rest,' he said.... 'I'll do both as soon as I possibly can ... as to repenting of my injustices, I've done no injustice, and I repent of nothing. I am too happy; and yet I'm not happy enough. My soul's bliss kills my body, but does not satisfy itself.'" ... "In the afternoon, while Joseph and Hareton were at their work, he came into the kitchen again, and, with a wild look, bid me come and sit in the house: he wanted somebody with him. I declined; telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will to be his companion alone.

"'I believe you think me a fiend,' he said, with his dismal laugh: 'something too horrible to live under a decent roof.' Then, turning to Catherine, who was there, and who drew behind me at his approach, he added, half sneeringly: 'Will _you_ come, chuck? I'll not hurt you. No!

to you I've made myself worse than the devil. Well, there is _one_ who won't shrink from my company! By G.o.d! she's relentless. Oh, d.a.m.n it!

It's unutterably too much for flesh and blood to bear--even mine.'"

It is Heathcliff's susceptibility to this immaterial pa.s.sion, the fury with which he at once sustains and is consumed by it, that makes him splendid.

Peace under green gra.s.s could never be the end of Heathcliff or of such a tragedy as _Wuthering Heights_. Its real end is the tale told by the shepherd whom Lockwood meets on the moor.

"'I was going to the Grange one evening--a dark evening, threatening thunder--and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him; he was crying terribly; and I supposed the lambs were skittish and would not be guided.

"'What is the matter, my little man?' I asked.

"'There's Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under t' Nab,' he blubbered, 'un' I darnut pa.s.s 'em.'"

It is there, the end, in one line, charged with the vibration of the supernatural. One line that carries the suggestion of I know not what ghostly and immaterial pa.s.sion and its unearthly satisfaction.

And this book stands alone, absolutely self-begotten and self-born. It belongs to no school; it follows no tendency. You cannot put it into any category. It is not "Realism", it is not "Romance", any more than _Jane Eyre_: and if any other master's method, De Maupa.s.sant's or Turgeniev's, is to be the test, it will not stand it. There is nothing in it you can seize and name. You will not find in it support for any creed or theory.

The redemption of Catherine Linton and Hareton is thrown in by the way in sheer opulence of imagination. It is not insisted on. Redemption is not the keynote of _Wuthering Heights_. The moral problem never entered into Emily Bronte's head. You may call her what you will--Pagan, pantheist, transcendentalist mystic and wors.h.i.+pper of earth, she slips from all your formulas. She reveals a point of view above good and evil.

Hers is an att.i.tude of tolerance that is only not tenderness because her acceptance of life and of all that lives is unqualified and unstinting.

It is too lucid and too high for pity.

Heathcliff and Catherine exist. They justify their existence by their pa.s.sion. But if you ask what is to be said for such a creature as Linton Heathcliff, you will be told that he does not justify his existence; his existence justifies him.

Do I despise the timid deer, Because his limbs are fleet with fear?

Or, would I mock the wolf's death-howl, Because his form is gaunt and foul?

Or, hear with joy the lev'ret's cry, Because it cannot bravely die?

No! Then above his memory Let Pity's heart as tender be.

After all it _is_ pity; it is tenderness.

And if Emily Bronte stands alone and is at her greatest in the things that none but she can do, she is great also in some that she may be said to share with other novelists; the drawing of minor characters, for instance. Lockwood may be a little indistinct, but he is properly so, for he is not a character, he is a mere impersonal looker-on. But Nelly Dean, the chief teller of the story, preserves her rich individuality through all the tortuous windings of the tale. Joseph, the old farm-servant, the bitter, ranting Calvinist, is a masterpiece. And masterly was that inspiration that made Joseph chorus to a drama that moves above good and evil. "'Thank Hivin for all!'" says Joseph. "'All warks togither for gooid, to them as is chozzen and piked out fro' the rubbidge. Yah knaw whet t' Scripture sez.'" "'It's a blazing shame, that I cannot oppen t' blessed Book, but yah set up them glories to Sattan, and all t' flaysome wickednesses that iver were born into the warld.'"

Charlotte Bronte said of her sister: "Though her feeling for the people round her was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced ... she could hear of them with interest and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but _with_ them she rarely exchanged a word." And yet you might have said she had been listening to Joseph all her life, such is her command of his copious utterance: "'Ech! ech!' exclaimed Joseph.

'Weel done, Miss Cathy! weel done, Miss Cathy! Howsiver, t' maister sall just tum'le o'er them brocken pots; un' then we's hear summut; we's hear how it's to be. Gooid-for-naught madling! ye desarve pining fro' this to Churstmas, flinging t' precious gifts o' G.o.d under fooit i' yer flaysome rages! But I'm mista'en if ye shew yer sperrit lang. Will Hathecliff bide sich bonny ways, think ye? I n.o.bbut wish he may catch ye i' that plisky. I n.o.bbut wish he may.'"

Edgar Linton is weak in drawing and in colour; but it was well-nigh impossible to make him more alive beside Catherine and Heathcliff. If Emily's hand fails in Edgar Linton it gains strength again in Isabella.

These two are the types of the civilized, the over-refined, the delicate wearers of silk and velvet, dwellers in drawing-rooms with pure white ceilings bordered with gold, "with showers of gla.s.s-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre". They, as surely as the tainted Hindley, are bound to perish in any struggle with strong, fierce, primeval flesh and blood. The fatal moment in the tale is where the two half-savage children, Catherine and Heathcliff, come to Thrushcross Grange.

Thrushcross Grange, with all its sickly brood, is doomed to go down before Wuthering Heights. But Thrushcross Grange is fatal to Catherine too. She has gone far from reality when she is dazzled by the glittering gla.s.s-drops and the illusion of Thrushcross Grange. She has divorced her body from her soul for a little finer living, for a polished, a scrupulously clean, perfectly presentable husband.

Emily Bronte shows an unerring psychology in her handling of the relations between Isabella and Catherine. It is Isabella's morbid pa.s.sion for Heathcliff that wakes the devil in Catherine. Isabella is a sentimentalist, and she is convinced that Heathcliff would love her if Catherine would "let him". She refuses to believe that Heathcliff is what he is. But Catherine, who _is_ Heathcliff, can afford to accuse him. "'Nelly,'" she says, "'help me to convince her of her madness. Tell her what Heathcliff is.... He's not a rough diamond--a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic; he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.'" But Isabella will not believe it. "'Mr. Heathcliff is not a fiend,'" she says; "'he has an honourable soul, and a true one, or how could he remember her?'"

It is the same insight that made George Meredith represent Juliana, the sentimental pa.s.sionist, as declaring her belief in Evan Harrington's innocence while Rose Jocelyn, whose love is more spiritual and therefore more profoundly loyal, doubts. Emily Bronte, like George Meredith, saw a sensualist in every sentimentalist; and Isabella Linton was a little animal under her silken skin. She is ready to go to her end _quand meme_, whatever Heathcliff is, but she tricks herself into believing that he is what he is not, that her sensualism may justify itself to her refinement. That is partly why Heathcliff, who is no sensualist, hates and loathes Isabella and her body.

But there are moments when he also hates the body of Catherine that betrayed her. Emily Bronte is unswerving in her drawing of Heathcliff.