Wuthering Heights

I begin to fancy you don't like me.  How strange!  I thought,
though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not
avoid loving me.  And they have all turned to enemies in a few
hours:  they have, I'm positive; the people here.  How dreary to
meet death, surrounded by their cold faces!  Isabella, terrified
and repelled, afraid to enter the room, it would be so dreadful to
watch Catherine go.  And Edgar standing solemnly by to see it over;
then offering prayers of thanks to God for restoring peace to his
house, and going back to his BOOKS!  What in the name of all that
feels has he to do with BOOKS, when I am dying?'

She could not bear the notion which I had put into her head of Mr.
Linton's philosophical resignation.  Tossing about, she increased
her feverish bewilderment to madness, and tore the pillow with her
teeth; then raising herself up all burning, desired that I would
open the window.  We were in the middle of winter, the wind blew
strong from the north-east, and I objected.  Both the expressions
flitting over her face, and the changes of her moods, began to
alarm me terribly; and brought to my recollection her former
illness, and the doctor's injunction that she should not be
crossed.  A minute previously she was violent; now, supported on
one arm, and not noticing my refusal to obey her, she seemed to
find childish diversion in pulling the feathers from the rents she
had just made, and ranging them on the sheet according to their
different species:  her mind had strayed to other associations.

'That's a turkey's,' she murmured to herself; 'and this is a wild
duck's; and this is a pigeon's.  Ah, they put pigeons' feathers in
the pillows - no wonder I couldn't die!  Let me take care to throw
it on the floor when I lie down.  And here is a moor-cock's; and
this - I should know it among a thousand - it's a lapwing's.  Bonny
bird; wheeling over our heads in the middle of the moor.  It wanted
to get to its nest, for the clouds had touched the swells, and it
felt rain coming.  This feather was picked up from the heath, the
bird was not shot:  we saw its nest in the winter, full of little
skeletons.  Heathcliff set a trap over it, and the old ones dared
not come.  I made him promise he'd never shoot a lapwing after
that, and he didn't.  Yes, here are more!  Did he shoot my
lapwings, Nelly?  Are they red, any of them?  Let me look.'

'Give over with that baby-work!' I interrupted, dragging the pillow
away, and turning the holes towards the mattress, for she was
removing its contents by handfuls.  'Lie down and shut your eyes:
you're wandering.  There's a mess!  The down is flying about like
snow.'

I went here and there collecting it.

'I see in you, Nelly,' she continued dreamily, 'an aged woman:  you
have grey hair and bent shoulders.  This bed is the fairy cave
under Penistone crags, and you are gathering elf-bolts to hurt our
heifers; pretending, while I am near, that they are only locks of
wool.  That's what you'll come to fifty years hence:  I know you
are not so now.  I'm not wandering:  you're mistaken, or else I
should believe you really WERE that withered hag, and I should
think I WAS under Penistone Crags; and I'm conscious it's night,
and there are two candles on the table making the black press shine
like jet.'

'The black press? where is that?' I asked.  'You are talking in
your sleep!'

'It's against the wall, as it always is,' she replied.  'It DOES
appear odd - I see a face in it!'

'There's no press in the room, and never was,' said I, resuming my
seat, and looping up the curtain that I might watch her.

'Don't YOU see that face?' she inquired, gazing earnestly at the
mirror.

And say what I could, I was incapable of making her comprehend it
to be her own; so I rose and covered it with a shawl.

'It's behind there still!' she pursued, anxiously.  'And it
stirred.  Who is it?  I hope it will not come out when you are
gone!  Oh!  Nelly, the room is haunted!  I'm afraid of being
alone!'

I took her hand in mine, and bid her be composed; for a succession
of shudders convulsed her frame, and she would keep straining her
gaze towards the glass.

'There's nobody here!' I insisted.  'It was YOURSELF, Mrs. Linton:
you knew it a while since.'

'Myself!' she gasped, 'and the clock is striking twelve!  It's
true, then! that's dreadful!'

Her fingers clutched the clothes, and gathered them over her eyes.
I attempted to steal to the door with an intention of calling her
husband; but I was summoned back by a piercing shriek - the shawl
had dropped from the frame.

'Why, what is the matter?' cried I.  'Who is coward now?  Wake up!
That is the glass - the mirror, Mrs. Linton; and you see yourself
in it, and there am I too by your side.'

Trembling and bewildered, she held me fast, but the horror
gradually passed from her countenance; its paleness gave place to a