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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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172 his breast, and perfectly silent, unless a groan or a bitter ejaculation forced itself out at intervals. I listened to detect a woman’s voice in the house, and filled the interim with wild regrets and dismal anticipations, which, at last, spoke audibly in irrepressible sighing and weeping. I was not aware how openly I grieved, till Earnshaw halted opposite, in his measured walk, and gave me a stare of newly awakened surprise. Taking advantage of his recovered attention, I exclaimed: “I’m tired with my journey, and I want to go to bed! Where is the maid-servant? Direct me to her, as she won’t come to me!” “We have none,” he answered; “you must wait on yourself!” “Where must I sleep then?” I sobbed; I was beyond regarding self-respect, weighed down by fatigue and wretchedness. “Joseph will show you Heathcliff’s chamber,” said he; “open that door--he’s in there.” I was going to obey, but he suddenly arrested me, and added in the strangest tone: “Be so good as to turn your lock, and draw your bolt--don’t omit it!” “Well!” I said. “But why, Mr. Earnshaw?” I did not relish the notion of deliberately fastening myself in with Heathcliff. “Look here!” he replied, pulling from his waistcoat a curiously constructed pistol, having a double-edged spring knife attached to the barrel. “That’s a great tempter to a desperate man, is it not? I cannot resist going up with this every night, and trying his door. If once I find it open, he’s done for! I do it invariably, even though the minute before I have been recalling a hundred reasons that should make me refrain; it is some devil that urges me to thwart |
