Behind Wuthering Heights 3

Employing my small knowledge of BookWalking I walked towards Wuthering Heights while thinking hard about it and Heathcliff being away for three years. Suddenly I was there, in the vestibule. I knocked, and Heathcliff answered.
“Ah, you came for your tour.” He smiled. “Can I get you some tea before we go?”
I accepted and over tea in the library he asked
“Is there any place in particular that you should like to go?” He offered a scone. “Anyone you want to meet? I can, of course give you the official tour, but since we haven’t had a visitor for awhile, at least that I have run into, you can choose where we go.”
“Would it be possible to meet Hareton Earnshaw?” I asked. “He was always my favorite character.”
“From the first? Or just after I die?”
“Oh, from the first. I thought that there was something different about him when we first meet him.”
“Hareton it is then. Any particular plot point?”
I shook my head.
“All right, we shall go where I have a soliloquy. I like those.” He smiled, and offered his hand, I took it and he closed his eyes. Suddenly we were in a small room with a cracking fire. Heathcliff peeked through the door.

Linton stood on the hearth. He had been out walking in the fields, for his cap was on, and he was calling to Joseph to bring him dry shoes.

“Ah,” said Heathcliff to me. “We haven’t arrived yet. I must go and join The Narrative. You will meet Hareton after this scene.”
I nodded. He climbed out the window and soon enough I heard the party entering the house, and the noises of the scene unfolding. Presently a young man came down the stairs into the room, his nose in a book, and sat next to the fire, still reading.
He had dark, shaggy hair, and rather scruffy clothes. His features were intense and handsome under a tan of many days in the sun. I studied him for a while and he seemed completely unaware of my presence. Then he seemed to get to the end of a chapter and looking up, he jumped.
“Oh, I am sorry, Miss, how do you do?” he bowed and spoke without a hint of an accent.
I shook his proffered hand and said I was fine, and how was he? Suddenly he stopped and said
“Nearly time for Narrative, though I wish I could finish my book.” I listened to the words that were always there. Always The Narrative was there.

Heathcliff rose, and went into the kitchen, and from thence to the yard, calling out for Hareton.

Hareton went out the window and I heard a splash has he put his head in a convenient rain barrel. And then gave an answering shout to his uncle.
Hareton responded, and presently the two re-entered. The young man had been washing himself, as was visible by the glow on his cheeks and his wetted hair.
“Oh, I'll ask you, uncle,” cried Miss Cathy, recollecting the housekeeper’s assertion. “That is not my cousin, is he?”
“Yes,” he, replied, “your mother's nephew. Don't you like him!”
Catherine looked queer.
After awhile Heathcliff’s voice rose.

“You'll be the favourite among us, Hareton! She says you are a - What was it? Well, something very flattering. Here! you go with her round the farm. And behave like a gentleman, mind! Don't use any bad words; and don't stare when the young lady is not looking at you, and be ready to hide your face when she is; and, when you speak, say your words slowly, and keep your hands out of your pockets. Be off, and entertain her as nicely as you can.”

Hareton and Cathy walked past the window. Cathy looked much like her mother. The Narrative was back, and I decided to wait and hear Heathcliff’s soliloquy.

He watched the couple walking past the window. Earnshaw had his countenance completely averted from his companion. He seemed studying the familiar landscape with a stranger's and an artist's interest. Catherine took a sly look at him, expressing small admiration. She then turned her attention to seeking out objects of amusement for herself, and tripped merrily on, lilting a tune to supply the lack of conversation.
“I've tied his tongue,'” observed Heathcliff. “He'll not venture a single syllable all the time! Nelly, you recollect me at his age - nay, some years younger. Did I ever look so stupid: so ‘gaumless,’ as Joseph calls it?”
“Worse,” I replied, “because more sullen with it.”
“I've a pleasure in him,” he continued, reflecting aloud. “He has satisfied my expectations. If he were a born fool I should not enjoy it half so much. But he's no fool; and I can sympathise with all his feelings, having felt them myself. I know what he suffers now, for instance, exactly: it is merely a beginning of what he shall suffer, though. And he'll never be able to emerge from his bathos of coarseness and ignorance. I've got him faster than his scoundrel of a father secured me, and lower; for he takes a pride in his brutishness. I've taught him to scorn everything extra- animal as silly and weak. Don't you think Hindley would be proud of his son, if he could see him? almost as proud as I am of mine. But there's this difference; one is gold put to the use of paving- stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver. MINE has nothing valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit of making it go as far as such poor stuff can go. HIS had first-rate qualities, and they are lost: rendered worse than unavailing. I have nothing to regret; he would have more than any but I are aware of. And the best of it is, Hareton is damnably fond of me! You'll own that I've outmatched Hindley there. If the dead villain could rise from his grave to abuse me for his offspring's wrongs, I should have the fun of seeing the said offspring fight him back again, indignant that he should dare to rail at the one friend he has in the world!”
Heathcliff chuckled a fiendish laugh at the idea. I made no reply, because I saw that he expected none. Meantime, our young companion, who sat too removed from us to hear what was said, began to evince symptoms of uneasiness, probably repenting that he had denied himself the treat of Catherine's society for fear of a little fatigue.
Heathcliff appeared again for a brief moment, at the break in The Narrative when it was talking about his son. “Should you like to wait awhile, I can take you to other places. Or you can try yourself.” He smiled and stepped back in time for The Narrative.
I waited, for it was only a few pages more ‘til he could accompany me, and I did not wish to interrupt The Narrative with my inept BookWalking.
His father remarked the restless glances wandering to the window, and the hand irresolutely extended towards his cap. “Get up, you idle boy!” he exclaimed, with assumed heartiness. “ Away after them! they are just at the corner, by the stand of hives.”