CHAPTER THREE

The End of It

One night, after the family was in bed, Ellen heard Heathcliff leave the house. He did not come back that night, and in the morning he was still gone.

It was April then, and the weather was fine and warm.

After breakfast that morning, Cathy went out to the garden. A few minutes later she ran back into the house.

"Heathcliff's come back, Ellen. He actually spoke to me," she told Ellen. "And he looked almost happy about something—but he's acting so strangely!"

A minute later Heathcliff stood at the open door.

"Will you have some breakfast?" Ellen asked.

He shook his head. "I'm not hungry, Ellen," he said.

He walked into the house. "Tell Hareton and the girl to stay away from me," he said. "I want to be alone. Don't you come and speak to me either. If all of you stay away from me, everything will be all right." Ellen did not understand.

He went into the inner room and shut the door. At eight o'clock that night she went into his room with a candle. He was sitting by the open window, staring out into the night. He did not seem to know that she was there.

"Mr Heathcliff, do you want me to close the window?" she asked him.

He turned, and Ellen saw his face. She was shocked to see him, because he looked like a ghost. He had deep black eyes and a strange smile, and he was terribly pale.

"All right, close the window," he said. "I'm going to my room. I won't want anything to eat till morning."

She heard him go up the stairs, but he did not go to his own room. He went into the one that had been Catherine's—the first Cathy's—when she was a girl.

The following night it began to rain, and it rained all night until early morning. As Ellen took her morning walk around the house, she saw that the window of the first Catherine's room was open, and the rain was coming into it.

Ellen opened the door of the room and looked in carefully. Heathcliff was sitting on the bed by the window. The look on his face amazed and frightened her. He was smiling.

She did not think that he was dead at first. His face and throat were wet with rain, the bed sheets were wet, but Heathcliff's body was still. When she touched his arm, she knew that he was finally dead.

She shut the window, combed his long black hair, and tried to close his eyes. They would not shut.

Ellen was suddenly afraid and called for Joseph.

"The devil has taken his soul!" he cried. "What a terrible man he is, smiling at death in that way!"

When Hareton was told that Heathcliff was dead, he cried and was very upset.

The doctor could not tell them why Heathcliff had died. There was no good reason for it at all.

They buried him where he wanted to be, close beside the body of the first Catherine.

However, soon the country people were saying that Heathcliff still walked around the moors. Some said that they'd seen him near the church, or even at Wuthering Heights. He was always with Catherine Earnshaw, who had been dead for many years now. Joseph promised Ellen that he had seen the first Cathy and Heathcliff running across the moors together one night, laughing happily. They were finally together.

Ellen did not believe any of these stories. People just liked to believe in ghosts, she thought. And yet she did not like being out in the dark herself, and she was happy that when Cathy and Hareton were married, everyone would go and live at Thrushcross Grange.

Sometimes, on a fine day, she went down to the churchyard to place flowers by Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw's graves. She also put flowers on Edgar Linton's grave, which was next to the other two.

She stood there one day under the beautiful sky and watched the birds fly among the trees and flowers. She listened to the soft wind moving through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever believe that Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff were not at peace in Heaven together.

(end of section)