29 Wuthering Heights Read By Stephanie Poppins

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 29 Looking at Heathcliff,

Catherine said,

Linton is all I have to love in the world and though you've done what you could to make him hateful to me and me to him,

You cannot make him hate us.

I defy you to hurt him when I'm by and I defy you to frighten me.

You are a boastful champion,

Replied Heathcliff,

But I don't like you well enough to hurt him.

You shall get the full benefit of the torment as long as it lasts.

It's not I who will make him hateful to you.

It is his own sweet spirit.

He's as bitter as gall at your desertion and its consequences.

Don't expect thanks for this noble devotion.

I heard him draw a pleasant picture to Zilla of what he would do if he was as strong as I.

The inclination is there and his very weakness will sharpen his wits to find a substitute for strength.

I know he has a bad nature,

Said Catherine.

He's your son,

But I'm glad I've a better to forgive it and I know he loves me and for that reason I love him.

Mr.

Heathcliff,

You have nobody to love you and however miserable you make us,

We shall still have the revenge of thinking your cruelty arises from your greater misery.

You are miserable,

Are you not?

Lonely like the devil and envious like him.

Nobody loves you.

Nobody will cry for you when you die.

I wouldn't be you.

Catherine spoke with a kind of dreary triumph.

She seemed to have made up her mind to enter into the spirit of her future family and draw pleasure from the griefs of her enemies.

You shall be sorry to be yourself presently,

Said her father-in-law.

If you stand there another minute,

Be gone witch and get your things.

Catherine scornfully withdrew.

In her absence I began to beg for Zilla's place at the heights,

Offering to resign mine to her,

But Heathcliff would suffer it on no account.

He bid me silent and then for the first time he allowed himself a glance around the room and a look at the pictures.

Having studied Mrs.

Linton's,

He said,

I shall have that at home.

Not because I need it,

But.

.

.

He turned abruptly to the fire and continued with what,

For lack of a better word,

I must call a smile.

I'll tell you what I did yesterday.

I got the sexton who was digging Linton's grave to remove the earth off her coffin lid and I opened it.

I thought once I would have stayed there when I saw her face again.

It is hers yet.

He had hard work to stir me,

But he said it would change if the air blew on it.

So I struck one side of the coffin loose and covered it up.

Not Linton's side,

Damn him,

I wish he'd been soldered in lead.

And I bribed the sexton to pull it away when I'm laid there and slide mine out too.

I'll have it made so.

And then by the time Linton gets to us he'll not know which is which.

You're very wicked,

Mr.

Heathcliff,

I exclaimed.

Were you not ashamed to disturb the dead?

I disturb nobody,

Nelly,

He replied.

I gave some ease to myself.

They shall be a great deal more comfortable now and you'll have a better chance of keeping me underground when I get there.

Disturbed Kathy?

No,

She has disturbed me night and day through 18 years,

Incessantly,

Remorselessly,

Till yesterday night.

And yesterday night I was tranquil.

I dreamed I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper,

With my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.

And if she'd been dissolved into earth,

Or worse,

What would you have dreamed of then?

I said.

Of dissolving with her and being more happy still,

He answered.

Do you suppose I dread any change of that sort?

I expected such a transformation on raising the lid,

But I'm better pleased it should not commence till I'd share it.

Besides,

Unless I'd received a distinct impression of her passionless features,

That strange feeling would hardly have been removed.

It began oddly.

You know,

I was wild after she died and eternally from dawn to dawn praying her to return to me.

Her spirit.

I have a strong faith in ghosts.

I have a conviction they can,

And do,

Exist amongst us.

The day she was buried there came a fall of snow.

In the evening I went to the churchyard.

It blew bleak as winter.

All round was solitary.

I didn't fear that her fool of a husband would wander up the glen so late,

And no one else had business to bring him there.

Being alone and conscious two yards of loose earth was the sole barrier between us,

I said to myself,

I'll have her in my arms again.

If she be cold,

I'll think it's this north wind that chills me,

And if she be motionless,

It is sleep.

I got a spade from the tall house and began to delve with all my might.

It scraped the coffin.

I fell to work with my hands.

The wood commenced cracking about the screws.

I was on the point of attaining my object,

When it seemed I heard a sigh from someone above,

Close at the edge of the grave and bending down.

If I can only get this off,

I muttered.

I wish they may shovel in the earth over both of us,

And I wrenched it more desperately still.

Then there was another sigh close at my ear.

I appeared to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleet-laden wind.

I knew no living thing in flesh and blood was by,

But certainly as you perceive,

The approach to some substantial body in the dark,

Though it cannot be discerned,

So certainly I felt Cathy was there,

Not under me,

But on the earth.

A sudden sense of relief flowed from my heart through every limb.

I relinquished my labour of agony and turned,

Consoled at once,

Unspeakably consoled.

Her presence was with me.

It remained while I refilled the grave and led me home.

You may laugh if you will,

But I was sure I should see her there.

I was sure she was with me,

And I could not help talking to her.

Having reached the heights,

I rushed eagerly to the door.

It was fastened.

I remember that accursed urn showing my wife opposed my entrance.

I remember stopping to kick the breath out of him and hurrying upstairs to my room.

I looked round impatiently.

I felt her by me.

I could almost see her,

And yet I could not.

I ought to have sweat-blood them from the anguish of my yearning.

From the fervour of my supplications do have but one glimpse.

I had not one.

She showed herself,

As she often was in life,

A devil to me,

And since then,

Sometimes more and sometimes less,

I had been the sport of that intolerable torture.

Infernal,

Keeping my nerves at such a stretch that if they had not resembled catgut they would long ago have relaxed to the feebleness of lintens.

When I sat in the house with Haerton,

It seemed that on going out I should meet her.

When I walked on the moors,

I should meet her coming in.

When I went from home,

I hastened to return.

She must be somewhere at the heights.

I was certain.

And when I slept in her chamber,

I was beaten out of that.

I could not lie there.

For the moment I closed my eyes,

She was either outside the window,

Or sliding back the panels,

Or entering the room,

Or resting her darling head on the same pillow as she did when she was a child.

And I must open my lids to see.

So I opened and closed them a hundred times a night,

To always be disappointed.

It wracked me.

I have often groaned aloud till that old rascal Joseph no doubt believed my conscience was playing the fiend inside of me.

Now,

Since I have seen her,

I am pacified a little.

It was a strange way of killing,

Not by inches,

But by fractions of hair-breadths,

To beguile me with a spectre of a hope through eighteen years.

Now Mr Heathcliff paused and wiped his forehead.

His hair clung to it,

Wet with perspiration.

His eyes were fixed on the red embers of the fire.

The brows not contracted,

But raised near the temples,

Diminishing the grim aspect of his countenance,

But imparting a peculiar look of trouble,

And a painful appearance of mental tension towards one absorbing subject.

He only half addressed me,

And I maintained silence.

I didn't like to hear him talk.

After a short period,

He resumed his meditation on the picture,

Took it down and leaned it against the sofa,

To contemplate it at a better advantage.

And whilst so occupied,

Catherine entered,

Announcing she was ready when her pony should be saddled.

Send that over to-morrow,

Said Heathcliff to me.

Then turning to her,

He added.

You may do without your pony.

It's a fine evening,

And you need no ponies at Wuthering Heights for what journeys you take.

Your own feet will serve you.

Come along.

Goodbye,

Ellen,

Whispered my dear little mistress.

As she kissed me,

Her lips felt like ice.

Come and see me,

Ellen,

Don't forget.

Take care you do no such thing,

Mrs.

Deane,

Said her new father.

When I wish to speak to you,

I'll come here.

I want none of your prying at my house.

Then he signed Cathy to precede him,

And cast him back a look that cut at my heart she obeyed.

I watched them from the window walk down the garden.

Heathcliff fixed Catherine's arm under his,

Though she disputed the act at first,

Evidently.

And with rapid strides,

He hurried her into the alley,

Whose trees then concealed them.