Chapter XVI

About twelve o’clock that night was born the Catherine you saw at
Wuthering Heights: a puny, seven-months’ child; and two hours after the
mother died, having never recovered sufficient consciousness to miss
Heathcliff, or know Edgar. The latter’s distraction at his bereavement
is a subject too painful to be dwelt on; its after-effects showed how
deep the sorrow sunk. A great addition, in my eyes, was his being left
without an heir. I bemoaned that, as I gazed on the feeble orphan; and
I mentally abused old Linton for (what was only natural partiality) the
securing his estate to his own daughter, instead of his son’s. An
unwelcomed infant it was, poor thing! It might have wailed out of life,
and nobody cared a morsel, during those first hours of existence. We
redeemed the neglect afterwards; but its beginning was as friendless as
its end is likely to be.

Next morning—bright and cheerful out of doors—stole softened in through
the blinds of the silent room, and suffused the couch and its occupant
with a mellow, tender glow. Edgar Linton had his head laid on the
pillow, and his eyes shut. His young and fair features were almost as
deathlike as those of the form beside him, and almost as fixed: but
his was the hush of exhausted anguish, and hers of perfect peace.
Her brow smooth, her lids closed, her lips wearing the expression of a
smile; no angel in heaven could be more beautiful than she appeared.
And I partook of the infinite calm in which she lay: my mind was never
in a holier frame than while I gazed on that untroubled image of Divine
rest. I instinctively echoed the words she had uttered a few hours
before: “Incomparably beyond and above us all! Whether still on earth
or now in heaven, her spirit is at home with God!”

I don’t know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom otherwise
than happy while watching in the chamber of death, should no frenzied
or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a repose that
neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the
endless and shadowless hereafter—the Eternity they have entered—where
life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in
its fulness. I noticed on that occasion how much selfishness there is
even in a love like Mr. Linton’s, when he so regretted Catherine’s
blessed release! To be sure, one might have doubted, after the wayward
and impatient existence she had led, whether she merited a haven of
peace at last. One might doubt in seasons of cold reflection; but not
then, in the presence of her corpse. It asserted its own tranquillity,
which seemed a pledge of equal quiet to its former inhabitant.

Do you believe such people are happy in the other world, sir? I’d
give a great deal to know.

I declined answering Mrs. Dean’s question, which struck me as something
heterodox. She proceeded:

Retracing the course of Catherine Linton, I fear we have no right to
think she is; but we’ll leave her with her Maker.

The master looked asleep, and I ventured soon after sunrise to quit the
room and steal out to the pure refreshing air. The servants thought me
gone to shake off the drowsiness of my protracted watch; in reality, my
chief motive was seeing Mr. Heathcliff. If he had remained among the
larches all night, he would have heard nothing of the stir at the
Grange; unless, perhaps, he might catch the gallop of the messenger
going to Gimmerton. If he had come nearer, he would probably be aware,
from the lights flitting to and fro, and the opening and shutting of
the outer doors, that all was not right within. I wished, yet feared,
to find him. I felt the terrible news must be told, and I longed to get
it over; but how to do it I did not know. He was there—at least, a
few yards further in the park; leant against an old ash-tree, his hat
off, and his hair soaked with the dew that had gathered on the budded
branches, and fell pattering round him. He had been standing a long
time in that position, for I saw a pair of ousels passing and repassing
scarcely three feet from him, busy in building their nest, and
regarding his proximity no more than that of a piece of timber. They
flew off at my approach, and he raised his eyes and spoke:—“She’s
dead!” he said; “I’ve not waited for you to learn that. Put your
handkerchief away—don’t snivel before me. Damn you all! she wants none
of your tears!”

I was weeping as much for him as her: we do sometimes pity creatures
that have none of the feeling either for themselves or others. When I
first looked into his face, I perceived that he had got intelligence of
the catastrophe; and a foolish notion struck me that his heart was
quelled and he prayed, because his lips moved and his gaze was bent on
the ground.

“Yes, she’s dead!” I answered, checking my sobs and drying my cheeks.
“Gone to heaven, I hope; where we may, every one, join her, if we take
due warning and leave our evil ways to follow good!”

“Did she take due warning, then?” asked Heathcliff, attempting a
sneer. “Did she die like a saint? Come, give me a true history of the
event. How did—?”

He endeavoured to pronounce the name, but could not manage it; and
compressing his mouth he held a silent combat with his inward agony,
defying, meanwhile, my sympathy with an unflinching, ferocious stare.
“How did she die?” he resumed, at last—fain, notwithstanding his
hardihood, to have a support behind him; for, after the struggle, he
trembled, in spite of himself, to his very finger-ends.

“Poor wretch!” I thought; “you have a heart and nerves the same as your
brother men! Why should you be anxious to conceal them? Your pride
cannot blind God! You tempt him to wring them, till he forces a cry of
humiliation.”

“Quietly as a lamb!” I answered, aloud. “She drew a sigh, and stretched
herself, like a child reviving, and sinking again to sleep; and five
minutes after I felt one little pulse at her heart, and nothing more!”

“And—did she ever mention me?” he asked, hesitating, as if he dreaded
the answer to his question would introduce details that he could not
bear to hear.

“Her senses never returned: she recognised nobody from the time you
left her,” I said. “She lies with a sweet smile on her face; and her
latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days. Her life closed in a
gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world!”

“May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping
his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion.
“Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in
heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my
sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue
stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living;
you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their
murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be
with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in
this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I
cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes,
howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast being goaded to death
with knives and spears. I observed several splashes of blood about the
bark of the tree, and his hand and forehead were both stained; probably
the scene I witnessed was a repetition of others acted during the
night. It hardly moved my compassion—it appalled me: still, I felt
reluctant to quit him so. But the moment he recollected himself enough
to notice me watching, he thundered a command for me to go, and I
obeyed. He was beyond my skill to quiet or console!

Mrs. Linton’s funeral was appointed to take place on the Friday
following her decease; and till then her coffin remained uncovered, and
strewn with flowers and scented leaves, in the great drawing-room.
Linton spent his days and nights there, a sleepless guardian; and—a
circumstance concealed from all but me—Heathcliff spent his nights, at
least, outside, equally a stranger to repose. I held no communication
with him; still, I was conscious of his design to enter, if he could;
and on the Tuesday, a little after dark, when my master, from sheer
fatigue, had been compelled to retire a couple of hours, I went and
opened one of the windows; moved by his perseverance to give him a
chance of bestowing on the faded image of his idol one final adieu. He
did not omit to avail himself of the opportunity, cautiously and
briefly; too cautiously to betray his presence by the slightest noise.
Indeed, I shouldn’t have discovered that he had been there, except for
the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse’s face, and for
observing on the floor a curl of light hair, fastened with a silver
thread; which, on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a
locket hung round Catherine’s neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket
and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own. I
twisted the two, and enclosed them together.

Mr. Earnshaw was, of course, invited to attend the remains of his
sister to the grave; he sent no excuse, but he never came; so that,
besides her husband, the mourners were wholly composed of tenants and
servants. Isabella was not asked.

The place of Catherine’s interment, to the surprise of the villagers,
was neither in the chapel under the carved monument of the Lintons, nor
yet by the tombs of her own relations, outside. It was dug on a green
slope in a corner of the kirkyard, where the wall is so low that heath
and bilberry-plants have climbed over it from the moor; and peat-mould
almost buries it. Her husband lies in the same spot now; and they have
each a simple headstone above, and a plain grey block at their feet, to
mark the graves.