Wuthering Heights - 82 (1497 words) · 逐行跟打 🔁 整篇模式    ← 返回课文列表
📝 您未登录,登录后完成练习可保存成绩、查看最佳记录。
总字符
0
正确字符
0
错误字符
0
错误率
0.00%
耗时(秒)
0
速度 WPM
0
0 / 72
1Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty. I went to the Heights as I proposed: my housekeeper entreated me to bear a
2little note from her to her young lady, and I did not refuse, for the worthy woman was not conscious of anything odd in
3her request. The front door stood open, but the jealous gate was fastened, as at my last visit; I knocked and invoked
4Earnshaw from among the garden-beds; he unchained it, and I entered. The fellow is as handsome a rustic as need be seen.
5I took particular notice of him this time; but then he does his best apparently to make the least of his advantages. I
6asked if Mr. Heathcliff were at home? He answered, No; but he would be in at dinner-time. It was eleven o'clock, and I
7announced my intention of going in and waiting for him; at which he immediately flung down his tools and accompanied me,
8in the office of watchdog, not as a substitute for the host. We entered together; Catherine was there, making herself
9useful in preparing some vegetables for the approaching meal; she looked more sulky and less spirited than when I had
10seen her first. She hardly raised her eyes to notice me, and continued her employment with the same disregard to common
11forms of politeness as before; never returning my bow and good-morning by the slightest acknowledgment. "She does not
12seem so amiable," I thought, "as Mrs. Dean would persuade me to believe. She's a beauty, it is true; but not an angel."
13Earnshaw surlily bid her remove her things to the kitchen. "Remove them yourself," she said, pushing them from her as
14soon as she had done; and retiring to a stool by the window, where she began to carve figures of birds and beasts out of
15the turnip-parings in her lap. I approached her, pretending to desire a view of the garden; and, as I fancied, adroitly
16dropped Mrs. Dean's note on to her knee, unnoticed by Hareton--but she asked aloud, "What is that?" And chucked it off.
17"A letter from your old acquaintance, the housekeeper at the Grange," I answered; annoyed at her exposing my kind deed,
18and fearful lest it should be imagined a missive of my own. She would gladly have gathered it up at this information,
19but Hareton beat her; he seized and put it in his waistcoat, saying Mr. Heathcliff should look at it first. Thereat,
20Catherine silently turned her face from us, and, very stealthily, drew out her pocket-handkerchief and applied it to her
21eyes; and her cousin, after struggling awhile to keep down his softer feelings, pulled out the letter and flung it on
22the floor beside her, as ungraciously as he could. Catherine caught and perused it eagerly; then she put a few questions
23to me concerning the inmates, rational and irrational, of her former home; and gazing towards the hills, murmured in
24soliloquy: "I should like to be riding Minny down there! I should like to be climbing up there! Oh! I'm tired--I'm
25stalled, Hareton!" And she leant her pretty head back against the sill, with half a yawn and half a sigh, and lapsed
26into an aspect of abstracted sadness: neither caring nor knowing whether we remarked her. "Mrs. Heathcliff," I said,
27after sitting some time mute, "you are not aware that I am an acquaintance of yours? so intimate that I think it strange
28you won't come and speak to me. My housekeeper never wearies of talking about and praising you; and she'll be greatly
29disappointed if I return with no news of or from you, except that you received her letter and said nothing!" She
30appeared to wonder at this speech, and asked,-- "Does Ellen like you?" "Yes, very well," I replied, hesitatingly. "You
31must tell her," she continued, "that I would answer her letter, but I have no materials for writing: not even a book
32from which I might tear a leaf." "No books!" I exclaimed. "How do you contrive to live here without them? if I may take
33the liberty to inquire. Though provided with a large library, I'm frequently very dull at the Grange; take my books
34away, and I should be desperate!" "I was always reading, when I had them," said Catherine; "and Mr. Heathcliff never
35reads; so he took it into his head to destroy my books. I have not had a glimpse of one for weeks. Only once, I searched
36through Joseph's store of theology, to his great irritation; and once, Hareton, I came upon a secret stock in your
37room--some Latin and Greek, and some tales and poetry: all old friends. I brought the last here--and you gathered them,
38as a magpie gathers silver spoons, for the mere love of stealing! They are of no use to you; or else you concealed them
39in the bad spirit that, as you cannot enjoy them, nobody else shall. Perhaps your envy counselled Mr. Heathcliff to rob
40me of my treasures? But I've most of them written on my brain and printed in my heart, and you cannot deprive me of
41those!" Earnshaw blushed crimson when his cousin made this revelation of his private literary accumulations, and
42stammered an indignant denial of her accusations. "Mr. Hareton is desirous of increasing his amount of knowledge," I
43said, coming to his rescue. "He is not envious, but emulous of your attainments. He'll be a clever scholar in a few
44years." "And he wants me to sink into a dunce, meantime," answered Catherine. "Yes, I hear him trying to spell and read
45to himself, and pretty blunders he makes! I wish you would repeat Chevy Chase as you did yesterday: it was extremely
46funny. I heard you; and I heard you turning over the dictionary to seek out the hard words, and then cursing because you
47couldn't read their explanations!" The young man evidently thought it too bad that he should be laughed at for his
48ignorance, and then laughed at for trying to remove it. I had a similar notion; and, remembering Mrs. Dean's anecdote of
49his first attempt at enlightening the darkness in which he had been reared, I observed,--"But, Mrs. Heathcliff, we have
50each had a commencement, and each stumbled and tottered on the threshold; had our teachers scorned instead of aiding us,
51we should stumble and totter yet." "Oh!" she replied, "I don't wish to limit his acquirements: still, he has no right to
52appropriate what is mine, and make it ridiculous to me with his vile mistakes and mispronunciations! Those books, both
53prose and verse, are consecrated to me by other associations; and I hate to have them debased and profaned in his mouth!
54Besides, of all, he has selected my favourite pieces that I love the most to repeat, as if out of deliberate malice."
55Hareton's chest heaved in silence a minute: he laboured under a severe sense of mortification and wrath, which it was no
56easy task to suppress. I rose, and, from a gentlemanly idea of relieving his embarrassment, took up my station in the
57doorway, surveying the external prospect as I stood. He followed my example, and left the room; but presently
58reappeared, bearing half a dozen volumes in his hands, which he threw into Catherine's lap, exclaiming,--"Take them! I
59never want to hear, or read, or think of them again!" "I won't have them now," she answered. "I shall connect them with
60you, and hate them." She opened one that had obviously been often turned over, and read a portion in the drawling tone
61of a beginner; then laughed, and threw it from her. "And listen," she continued, provokingly, commencing a verse of an
62old ballad in the same fashion. But his self-love would endure no further torment: I heard, and not altogether
63disapprovingly, a manual check given to her saucy tongue. The little wretch had done her utmost to hurt her cousin's
64sensitive though uncultivated feelings, and a physical argument was the only mode he had of balancing the account, and
65repaying its effects on the inflictor. He afterwards gathered the books and hurled them on the fire. I read in his
66countenance what anguish it was to offer that sacrifice to spleen. I fancied that as they consumed, he recalled the
67pleasure they had already imparted, and the triumph and ever-increasing pleasure he had anticipated from them; and I
68fancied I guessed the incitement to his secret studies also. He had been content with daily labour and rough animal
69enjoyments, till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompters to
70higher pursuits; and instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavours to raise himself had
71produced just the contrary result. "Yes, that's all the good that such a brute as you can get from them!" cried
72Catherine, sucking her damaged lip, and watching the conflagration with indignant eyes.
🎉 全部完成!共 72 行