Catherine the Ghost by Kathe Koja

Author:Kathe Koja [Koja, Kathe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CLASH Books

Seven

the Lintons always called me dear Miss Earnshaw

the Lintons fully believed that they bettered me by their flatteries and comforts, petit-point and spinnet lessons, ringlets and a beaver hat—after their bulldog chewed me bloody for a thief!—but it was not so, never so, it was like a stone in my shoe when I tried to be that young lady of the Grange, stroll with Isabella, dance with Edgar, curb my temper and my tongue, stay inside when the wind was rising or the night was breathing at the windows, make believe I did not know life as I did, its horrors and its bliss

to be a Linton should be no one’s ambition

the Lintons believed too that Heathcliff was unworthy of their notice, that he was a ploughboy, a bastard, worse than a brute

until Isabella took her lunatic’s fancy to him

Isabella! it was laughable, worse than laughable, as deplorable as if a coddled canary sought to mate with a hunting goshawk—when I saw what she was about, I gave her the truth of what she was, and what Heathcliff was, I told her that Heathcliff could never love a Linton, that he would crush her like a sparrow’s egg—but she would not believe me and she would not desist, she said You’re a dog in the manger, Cathy! I love Heathcliff more than you ever loved Edgar, and he might love me if you would let him!

so to punish her for her impertinence, and put a final end to the business, I put her together with Heathcliff in the parlor, and told her ridiculous secret—I’m proud to show you someone who dotes on you more than myself, I expect you to feel flattered! My poor little sister-in-law is breaking her heart over your physical and moral beauty—as if Isabella should ever taste either! Isabella with her yellow curls and petty tears, her vixen’s temper, she scratched me with her sharp little nails to escape that parlor scene, I told her to begone, I told Heathcliff he must not notice her further

but her spoiled greed to have what was only mine spurred his own greed for what could not, could never, satisfy him, and aided his belief in its imagined power—to own the Grange! to own the Heights! as if mere property could repair our damage, or restore the years that were lost—he was sick with it already, that greed and vengeance, rotten seeds planted by Hindley

and I feared it for him, for did I not once believe the same? that to be Mrs. Linton would somehow save us both?

I was right to fear

more years lost to the cold

for when Nelly caught him courting Isabella on the sly, he was fully unrepentant, he stood there in the kitchen of the Grange and told me that I had treated him infernally, had leveled our palace and given him a hovel for a home, that I was a fool if I thought he would suffer unrevenged—he said, purely to wound me, I have a

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