While leading the way upstairs, she recommended that I should hidethe candle, and not make a noise; for her master had an odd notion a-bout the chamber she would put me in, and never let anybody lodgethere willingly. I asked the reason. She did not know, she answered:she had only lived there a year or two; and they had so many queer go-ings on, she could not begin to be curious.
Too stupefied to be curious myself, I fastened my door and glancedround for the bed. The whole furniture consisted of a chair, a clothes-press, and a large oak case, with squares cut near the top resemblingcoach windows. Having approached this structure I looked inside, andperceived it to be a singular sort of old-fashioned couch, very conven-iently designed to obviate the necessity for every member of the familyhaving a room to himself. In fact, it formed a little closet, and the ledgeof a window, which it enclosed, served as a table. I slid back the pan-elled sides, got in with my light, pulled them together again, and feltsecure against the vigilance of I-Ieathcliff, and every one else.
The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed bookspiled up in one corner; and it was covered with writing scratched on thepaint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in allkinds of characters, large and small--Catherine Earnshaw, here andthere varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton.
In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and contin-ued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw--Heathcliff--Linton, till my eyesclosed ; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white lettersstarted from the dark as vivid as spectres--the air swarmed with Cather-ines; and rousing myself to dispel the obtrusive name, I discovered mycandle wick reclining on one of the antique volumes, and perfuming theplace with an odour of roasted calf skin. I snuffed it off, and, very ill atease under the influence of cold and lingering nausea, sat up and spreadopen the injured tome on my knee. It was a Testament, in lean type,and smelling dreadfully musty: a fly-leaf bore the inscription--"Cather-ine Earnshaw, her book", and a date some quarter of a century back. Ishut it, and took up another and another, till I had examined all. Cath-erine's library was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it to havebeen well used though not altogether for a legitimate purpose: scarcelyone chapter had escaped a pen-and-ink commentary--at least, the ap-pearance of one--covering every morsel of blank that the printer hadleft. Some were detached sentences ; others took the form of a regular di-ary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand. At the top of an extrapage (quite a treasure, probably, when first lighted on)I was greatly a-mused to behold an excellent caricature of my friend Joseph--rudely,yet powerfully sketched. An immediate interest kindled within me for theunknown Catherine and I began forthwith to decipher her faded hiero-glyphics.
P19-20
