| 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 farther 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; and 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, everyone, 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 recognized 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 getting 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; and 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.
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