Hello.
Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,
Your go-to romantic podcast that guarantees you a calm and entertaining transition into a great night's sleep.
Come with me as we immerse ourselves in a romantic journey to a time long since forgotten.
Emily Bronte was born in Yorkshire in 1818 and along with her brother and sisters Anne and Charlotte,
Wrote from childhood onwards.
Wuthering Heights is the story she is best remembered for.
But before we begin,
Let's take a moment to focus on where we are now.
Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.
Now close your eyes and feel yourself sink deeper into the support beneath you.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter 31 Yesterday was bright,
Calm and frosty.
I went to the Heights as I proposed.
My housekeeper entreated me to bear a little note from her to her young lady and I did not refuse for the worthy woman was not conscious of anything odd in her request.
The front door stood open but the jealous gate was fastened as at my last visit.
I knocked and invoked Earnshaw from among the garden beds.
He unchained it and I entered.
The fellow is as handsome a rustic as need be seen.
I took particular notice of him this time but then he does his best apparently to make the least of his advantages.
I asked if Mr Heathcliff were at home and he answered no but he would be in at dinner time.
It was 11 o'clock and I announced my intention of going in and waiting for him at which he immediately flung down his tools and accompanied me in the office of watchdog not as a substitute for the host.
We entered together.
Catherine was there making herself useful in preparing some vegetables for the approaching meal.
She looked more sulky and less spirited than when I'd seen her first.
She hardly raised her eyes to notice me and continued her employment with the same disregard to common forms of politeness as before,
Never returning my bow and good morning by the slightest acknowledgement.
She does not seem so amiable I thought as Mrs Dean would persuade me to believe.
She is a beauty it's true but not an angel.
Earnshaw surly bid her remove her things to the kitchen.
Remove them yourself she said pushing them from her as soon as she'd done and retiring to a stall by the window where she began to carve figures of birds and beasts out of the turnip pairings in her lap.
I approached her pretending to desire a view of the garden and as I fancied adroitly dropped Mrs Dean's note onto her knee unnoticed by Hairton but she asked aloud what is that and chucked it off.
A letter from your old acquaintance the housekeeper at the Grange I answered annoyed at her exposing my kind deed and fearful that it should be imagined omissive of my own.
She would gladly have gathered it up but Hairton beat her he seized and put it in his waistcoat saying Mr Heathcliff should look at it first.
Thereat Catherine silently turned her face from us and very stealthily drew out her pocket handkerchief and applied it to her eyes.
Her cousin after struggling a while to keep down his softer feelings pulled out the letter and flung it on the floor beside her as ungraciously as he could.
Catherine caught and perused it eagerly then she put a few questions to me concerning the inmates rational and irrational of her former home and gazing towards the hills she murmured in soliloquy I should like to be riding mini down there I should like to be climbing up there oh I'm tired I'm stalled Hairton and she leaned her pretty head back against the sill with half a yawn and half a sigh and lapsed into an aspect of abstracted sadness neither caring nor knowing whether we remarked her.
Mrs Heathcliff I said after sitting some time mute you are not aware that I am an acquaintance of yours so intimate that I think it's strange you won't come and speak to me my housekeeper never wearies of talking about you and praising you and she'll be greatly disappointed if I return with no news of or from you except that you received her letter and said nothing.
Cathy appeared to wonder at this speech and asked Does Ellen like you?
Yes very well I replied hesitatingly.
Then you must tell her she continued that I would answer her letter but I have no materials for writing not even a book from which I might tear a leaf.
No books I exclaimed how do you contrive to live here without them?
If I may take the liberty to inquire though provided with a large library I'm frequently very dull at the grange take my books away and I shall be desperate.
I was always reading when I had them said Catherine and Mr Heathcliff never reads so he took it into his head to destroy my books I've not had a glimpse of one for weeks.
Only once I searched through Joseph's store of theology to his great irritation and once Herten I came across a secret stock in your room some Latin and Greek some tales and poetry all old friends.
I brought the last here and you gathered them as a magpie gathers silver spoons for the mere love of stealing.
They're of no use to you or else you can seal them in the bad spirit but as you cannot enjoy them nobody else shall.
Perhaps your envy counts Mr Heathcliff to rob me of my treasures but I have most of them written on my brain and printed in my heart and you cannot deprive me of those.
At this Earnshaw blushed crimson and he stammered in an indignant denial of her accusations.
Mr Herten is desirous of increasing his amount of knowledge.
I said come into his rescue he's not envious but emulous of your attainments.
He'll be a clever scholar in a few years and he wants me to sink into a dunce meantime answered Catherine.
Yes I hear him trying to spell and read aloud to himself and pretty blunt as he makes.
I wish you were a peach heavy chase as you did yesterday.
It was extremely funny.
I heard you and I heard you turning over the dictionary to seek out the hard words and then cursing because you couldn't read their explanations.
The young man evidently thought it too bad he should be laughed at for his ignorance and then laughed at for trying to remove it.
I had a similar notion and remembering Mrs Dean's anecdote of his first attempt at enlightening the darkness in which he'd been reared I observed but Mrs Heathcliff we have each had a commencement and each stumbled and tottered on the threshold and had our teachers scorned instead of aiding us.
We should stumble and totter yet.
Oh she replied I don't wish to limit his acquirements still he has no right to appropriate what is mine and make it ridiculous to me with his vile mistakes and mispronunciations.
Those books both prose and verse were consecrated to me by other associations.
I hate to have them debased and profaned in his mouth.
Besides of all he has selected my favourite pieces I love most to repeat as if out of deliberate malice.
Hairton's chest heaved in silence a minute.
He laboured under a severe sense of mortification and wrath which it was no easy task to suppress.
I rose and from a gentlemanly idea of relieving his embarrassment I took up my station in the doorway surveying the external prospect as I stood.
He followed my example and left the room but presently reappeared bearing half a dozen volumes in his hands which he threw into Catherine's lap exclaiming,
Take them I never want to hear or read or think of them again.
I won't have them now she answered I shall connect them with you and hate them.
She opened one that had obviously been often turned over and read a portion in the drawing tone of a beginner then laughed and throw it from her.
And listen she continued provoking me commencing a verse of a ballad in the same fashion.
But his self-love would endure no further torment I heard and not altogether disapprovingly a manual check given to her saucy tongue.
The little wretch had done her utmost to hurt her cousin's sensitive though uncultivated feelings and a physical argument was the only mode he had of balancing the account and repaying its effects on the inflictor.
He afterwards gathered the books and hurled them on the fire.
I read in his countenance what anguish it was to offer that sacrifice to spleen.
I fancied that as they consumed he recalled the pleasure they had already imparted and the triumph and ever-increasing pleasure he had anticipated from them and I fancied I guess the incitement to his secret studies also.
He had been content with daily labour and rough animal enjoyments till Catherine crossed his path.
Shame at her scorn and hope of her approval were his first prompters to higher pursuits and instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other,
His endeavours to raise himself had produced just the contrary result.
