Page:Emily Bronte (Robinson 1883).djvu/201

Rh Isabella—poor, weak, romantic, sprightly Isabel—was not missed at first; for very terrible trouble had fallen upon the Grange. Catharine, in a paroxysm of rage at the dismissal of Heathcliff, quarrelled violently with Edgar, and shut herself up in her own room. For three days and nights she remained there, eating nothing; Edgar, secluded in his study, expecting every mompnt that she would come down and ask his forgiveness; Nelly Dean, who alone knew of her determined starving, resolved to say nothing about it, and conquer, once for all, the haughty and passionate spirit which possessed her beautiful young mistress.

So three days went by. Catharine still refused all her food, and unsympathetic Ellen still resolved to let her starve, if she chose, without a remonstrance. On the third day Catharine unbarred her door and asked for food; and now Ellen Dean was too frightened to exult. Her mistress was wasted, haggard, wild, as if by months of illness; the too-presumptuous servant remembered the doctor's warning, and dreaded her master's anger, when he should discover Catharine's real condition.

On this servant's obstinate cold-heartedness rests the crisis of 'Wuthering Heights;' had Ellen Dean, at the first, attempted to console the violent, childish Catharine, had she acquainted Edgar of the real weakness underneath her pride, Catharine would have had no fatal illness and left no motherless child; and had moping Isabel, instead of being left to weep alone about the park and garden, been conducted to her sister's room and shown a real sickness to nurse, a real misery to mend, she would not have gone away with Heathcliff, and wedded herself to sorrow, out of a fanciful love in idleness. It is characteristic of Emily Brontë's genius that she should