Chapter 27

'May you not rest!'

01 At twelve o'clock that night a second Catherine, a weak, seven months' child, was born; and two hours after, the mother died, having never recovered enough consciousness to miss Heathcliff or to recognize Edgar. Her husband's grief was painful to see, and was greatly increased, in my opinion, by his being left without an heir. In my mind I blamed old Mr Linton for fondly settling his property, when Edgar should die, on his own daughter, and not on his son's.

02 Soon after sunrise, I went out, wishing, yet fearing, to find Heathcliff. He was leaning against a tree, his hat off, his hair wet with the morning mist.

03 'She's dead,' he said. 'I've not waited for you, to learn that. Put away your handkerchief. She wants none of your tears. How did ... ' he struggled with his grief, refusing my sympathy meanwhile with a fierce stare, 'how did she die?'

04 'Poor unhappy soul,' I thought, 'you have a heart and feelings the same as other men!' I then replied aloud, 'Quietly as a lamb.'

05 'And—did she ever mention me?'

06 'Her senses never returned. She recognized no one from the time you left her. She lies with a sweet smile on her face, and her last spoken thoughts wandered back to pleasant days of her childhood.'

07 'May she wake in torment!' he cried, with terrible violence. 'Why, she's a liar to the end! 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 that I killed you—haunt me, then! Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! Only, do not leave me here, where I cannot find you! Oh God, I cannot live without my life!'

08 He struck his head against the tree trunk, not like a man, but like a wild beast. The moment he recovered enough to notice me, he thundered a command for me to go, and I obeyed.

09 Catherine's funeral was appointed to take place on the Friday following her death. Till then, her coffin lay uncovered in the largest room downstairs. Edgar spent his days and nights there, a sleepless guardian, while Heathcliff, as only I knew, watched, equally sleepless, outside.

10 On the Tuesday, a little after dark, when my master, weary with watching, had gone to rest for an hour or two, I went and opened one of the windows, to give Heathcliff a chance to say a last goodbye.

11 That he had silently done so, I knew, when later I noticed on the floor a curl of fair hair, torn from the little heart-shaped gold box that hung on a chain round Catherine's neck. It was her husband's, and Heathcliff had thrown it out and replaced it by black hair of his own. I twisted the two, and enclosed them together.

12 Mr Earnshaw was invited to attend the body of his sister to the grave, but he never came. Isabella was not asked.

13 Catherine was laid in earth, to the surprise of the villagers, neither in the church with the Linton family, nor outside with her own relations. Her grave was dug on a green slope in a corner of the churchyard where the wall is so low that wild plants have climbed over it from the moor.