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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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216 “I might as well have struggled with a bear, or reasoned with a lunatic. The only resource left me was to run to a lattice and warn his intended victim of the fate which awaited him. “‘You’d better seek shelter somewhere else tonight!’ I exclaimed in a rather triumphant tone. ‘Mr. Earnshaw has a mind to shoot you, if you persist in endeavouring to enter.’ “‘You’d better open the door, you---’ he answered, addressing me by some elegant term that I don’t care to repeat. “‘I shall not meddle in the matter,’ I retorted again. ‘Come in and get shot, if you please! I’ve done my duty.’ “With that I shut the window and returned to my place by the fire, having too small a stock of hypocrisy at my command to pretend any anxiety for the danger that menaced him. Earnshaw swore passionately at me, affirming that I loved the villain yet, and calling me all sorts of names for the base spirit I evinced. And I, in my secret heart (and conscience never reproached me), thought what a blessing it would be for him, should Heathcliff put him out of misery; and what a blessing for me, should he send Heathcliff to his right abode! As I sat nursing these reflections, the casement behind me was banged on to the floor by a blow from the latter individual, and his black countenance looked blightingly through. The stanchions stood too close to suffer his shoulders to follow, and I smiled, exulting in my fancied security. His hair and clothes were whitened with snow, and his sharp cannibal teeth, revealed by cold and wrath, gleamed through the dark. “‘Isabella, let me in, or I’ll make you repent!’ he ‘girned’, as Joseph calls it. “‘I cannot commit murder,’ I replied. ‘Mr. Hindley stands sentinel with a knife and loaded pistol.’ |
