Грозовой перевал / Wuthering Heights

This proceeding aroused the whole hive: half-a-dozen four-footed fiends, of various sizes and ages, issued from hidden dens to the common centre. I felt my heels and coat-laps peculiar subjects of assault; and parrying off the larger combatants as effectually as I could with the poker, I was constrained to demand, aloud, assistance from some of the household in re-establishing peace.

Mr. Heathcliff and his man climbed the cellar steps with vexatious phlegm: I don’t think they moved one second faster than usual, though the hearth was an absolute tempest of worrying and yelping.

Happily, an inhabitant of the kitchen made more despatch: a lusty dame, with tucked-up gown, bare arms, and fire-flushed cheeks, rushed into the midst of us flourishing a frying-pan: and used that weapon, and her tongue, to such purpose, that the storm subsided magically, and she only remained, heaving like a sea after a high wind, when her master entered on the scene.

�What the devil is the matter?’ he asked, eyeing me in a manner that I could ill endure, after this inhospitable treatment.

�What the devil, indeed!’ I muttered. �The herd of possessed swine could have had no worse spirits in them than those animals of yours, sir.[3 - Это аллюзия на известный библейский сюжет: когда демоны были вынуждены покинуть человеческое тело, они вселились в свиней.

] You might as well leave a stranger with a brood of tigers!’

�They won’t meddle with persons who touch nothing,’ he remarked, putting the bottle before me, and restoring the displaced table. �The dogs do right to be vigilant. Take a glass of wine?’

�No, thank you.’

�Not bitten, are you?’

�If I had been, I would have set my signet on the biter.’ Heathcliff’s countenance relaxed into a grin.

�Come, come,’ he said, �you are flurried, Mr.

Lockwood. Here, take a little wine. Guests are so exceedingly rare in this house that I and my dogs, I am willing to own, hardly know how to receive them. Your health, sir?’

I bowed and returned the pledge; beginning to perceive that it would be foolish to sit sulking for the misbehaviour of a pack of curs; besides, I felt loth to yield the fellow further amusement at my expense; since his humour took that turn.