[00:01.29] Chapter two.
[00:02.46] Nelly begins her story.
[00:06.70] The next day I woke up with a bad cold.
[00:09.84] I also felt lonely.
[00:12.93] All day I longed for company.
[00:17.02] And when my servant, Nelly Dean, brought in my supper tray, I asked her to stay.
[00:23.95] Tell me about Heathcliff, I said.
[00:27.88] Curious to learn more about this strange man, and indeed about all the inhabitants of Whering Heights.
[00:36.97] Of the spirit at the window, I did not speak, fearing that she might think me mad.
[00:44.87] Do you know anything about him?
[00:48.81] Know anything of him, sir, said Nelly.
[00:53.93] Why, I was there when he was first brought to the house.
[01:03.52] I was often at Whering Heights in those days, helping with the hay and at whatever task they gave me.
[01:11.42] One day, it came about that my master, Mr. Ershaw, went on a journey to Liverpool.
[01:20.18] He returned carrying his great coat bundled in his arms and tired beyond words, but smiling.
[01:29.38] See, wife, he said, I was never so beaten with anything in my life.
[01:35.64] But you must take it as a gift from God, although it's as dark as if it came from the devil.
[01:46.47] What tumbled out from the coat was a dirty ragged child.
[01:53.78] It was old enough to walk and talk, but it did neither.
[01:58.88] Instead it glared all around itself, uttering some gibberish that none of us understood.
[02:07.68] Heaven keep me, I thought, from ever receiving such a gift, either from the Almighty or from Lucifer.
[02:19.69] Mrs. Ershaw was all for throwing it out of the house.
[02:27.89] How could you bring a gypsy brat like this to our home, she demanded, when we have our own children to feed and clothe.
[02:41.22] What do you mean to do with it?
[02:43.24] Are you mad?
[02:46.98] Oh, she ranted on, sir, and I felt that none could blame her.
[02:53.56] The master, half dead from fatigue, tried to explain what had happened, but all that I could make out between the mistress's scoldings was the fact that he had found the child homeless and all but starving in the streets of Liverpool.
[03:13.52] No one could tell him to whom the child belonged, and he was determined not to leave it to die in the gutter.
[03:22.98] Wash it and give it clean clothes, my master told me, and let it sleep with the children.
[03:33.27] That was Miss Kathy and Master Hindley, sir, his son and daughter.
[03:40.01] Well, I bathed it as asked, and then put it on the stair landing from where I secretly hoped it might creep away in the night.
[03:53.76] It didn't creep away, sir, but crept instead to Mr. Ershaw's bedroom door, where he found it in the morning.
[04:04.87] I was sent away from the house as a punishment for my cold heart.
[04:11.95] When I returned, I found that the child had been christened Heathcliff, and that he and Miss Kathy had become great friends already.
[04:23.24] The two would be about the same age, six or seven years old.
[04:30.18] Hindley was 14, and he hated Heathcliff.
[04:39.23] As for the mistress, she never put in a good word for him when she saw him wronged, and he was wronged a good deal.
[04:50.01] This made old Mr. Ershaw sad, as he had taken to the boy in a way that he had never taken to his own son, or indeed to Miss Kathy.
[05:02.90] Oh, Master Hindley was a whiner, sir, forever complaining if he didn't get his own way.
[05:12.63] As for Miss Kathy, she was far too mischievous to be a favorite.
[05:19.43] But Heathcliff, although he was a patient, silent, hard-working child, was far from perfect.
[05:31.21] I'll give you an instance.
[05:36.51] One day, the master bought two colts at a fair and gave one to each of the lads.
[05:44.34] Heathcliff chose the most handsome of the two, but it soon went lame.
[05:54.24] You must exchange horses with me, he told Hindley.
[05:59.54] If you don't, I shall tell your father about the three beatings you've given me this week.
[06:07.18] Get away, dog, cried Hindley, seeing Heathcliff's movement towards his pony.
[06:14.60] He bent and lifted an iron weight used for weighing potatoes and threatened to throw it.
[06:21.58] Throw it, said Heathcliff, not moving an inch, and I'll tell how you boast that you'll turn me out of the house when he dies.
[06:32.88] See if he won't throw you out instead.
[06:37.36] Hindley threw the weight, catching the child in the chest.
[06:43.43] Down he fell, but staggered up at once, breathless and white.
[06:49.97] Take my cult then Gypsy, said young Ershaw, and I pray he may break your neck.
[07:00.23] Heathcliff had already started to move the animal to his own stable, even as Hindley spoke.
[07:08.51] Enraged by this, Hindley knocked him under the pony's feet.
[07:15.87] But Heathcliff coolly gathered himself up, and without a word, began to exchange the saddles.
[07:25.42] So, from the very beginning, Heathcliff bred bad feeling.
[07:32.99] Hindley saw him as someone who had stolen his father's love and his rights as the son of the house.
[07:42.58] Whenever he got the chance, he bullied and beat the child.
[07:50.39] Heathcliff never told tales, but he always let Hindley know that he would do so if and when it suited him.
[08:01.87] At last, not knowing what else to do, Mr. Ershaw sent Hindley away to college.
[08:12.77] Now, I thought, we will have some peace.
[08:18.30] And so we might have done, had it not been for Miss Kathy and Joseph.
[08:24.84] Joseph was, and is, the most wearisome old man, quoting the Bible at every turn, seeing sins and faults in others and telling a long string of tales about Kathy and Heathcliff.
[08:41.24] Certainly, Miss Kathy had ways with her that I never before saw in a child.
[08:49.20] And she could make us lose patience 50 times a day.
[08:55.75] Her spirits were always high, and she was forever laughing, singing, talking, and she was much too fond of Heathcliff.
[09:09.00] The greatest punishment we could give her was to separate her from him.
[09:19.20] Then one day, with Kathy for once sitting quietly by his side, and Heathcliff at his feet, old Mr. Ershaw died.
[09:34.27] When Kathy realized that her father was gone from her, she sobbed so piteously that none who heard her could have doubted for a moment how dearly she had loved him.
[09:49.56] Hindley came home at once and surprised us all by bringing a wife with him.
[09:59.14] She was a nice young thing, but thin, sir, and I noticed she coughd a lot.
[10:09.28] The first thing that Hindley did on his return was to tell me and Joseph that in future we were to live in the kitchen, leaving the house to himself and his wife.
[10:23.04] As for Heathcliff, he was no longer to have lessons with Kathy and was sent to work outside with the farm hands.
[10:33.28] He didn't mind this too much at first.
[10:37.43] Kathy taught him all she learned and worked and played with him in the fields.
[10:46.65] Oh, they were like a pair of savages, and what they loved most was to run away to the malls and stay there all day.
[10:57.07] They hid themselves away so often that one evening, when they didn't return for supper, Master Hindley locked the doors and told us that we were not to let them in.
[11:10.37] But I was too worried to sleep.
[11:16.14] I sat by my bedroom window gazing out, and after a while, I saw a light glimmering down by the gate.
[11:27.89] I threw a shawl over my head and ran down and found Heathcliff.
[11:34.24] He was alone.
[11:37.55] Where's Miss Kathy?
[11:40.59] I cried.
[11:42.91] At Thrushcross Grange, he replied.
[11:51.62] Catherine was here, I cried.
[11:57.77] After reading snatches of her diary and hearing Nelly speak so vividly of her, she had become a live, breathing being to me.
[12:10.61] Indeed, I half expected the door to open and for her to stand there.
[12:17.54] Oh, indeed, yes, said Nelly.
[12:21.85] Catherine was here.
[12:26.64] In time, Catherine became the mistress of Thrushcross Grange.
[12:36.41] But it's late, sir, she added.
[12:41.31] The story will keep until tomorrow.
[12:48.98] Gathering up my tray and her knitting, at which she had worked while she told her tale, she left the room.