Wuthering Heights From the story by Emily Bronte

«Tell me, Nelly,» he urged, «how did she…?» He struggled to speak, trembling all over. «How did she die?» he managed to say at last.

«As quietly as a lamb,» I answered. «She died in a gentle dream – and may she wake as gently in heaven!»

«May she wake in torment!» he cried out violently. «Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said that I killed you – well haunt me, then! Be with me always – take any form – drive me insane! Only don’t leave me in this darkness where I cannot find you! You know I can’t live without my life! I can’t live without my soul!»

Then he started beating his head against the tree trunk and howling like a savage beast in pain.

Cathy was buried in Gimmerton churchyard five days later. Edgar spent every night until then sitting by her coffin, while Heathcliff kept watch in the garden outside. On the day of her funeral, only Edgar and the servants accompanied Cathy’s coffin to her grave. To my surprise, she wasn’t buried inside the church with the Lintons, or with her parents by the church door. Instead, her grave was dug on a green slope in the corner of the churchyard, just where the graveyard meets the moor.

On the evening of Cathy’s funeral, the warm spring sunshine changed to snow. Soon the primroses were covered in wintry snowdrifts^[67] and the larks were silent again. The mood in the Grange was dismal. My master stayed in his study while I took over the sitting room^[68], turning it into a nursery for baby Catherine. I spent my days trying to comfort the tiny moaning doll of a child, and watching the sleet and snow driving outside.

The day after the funeral, I was sitting with the baby, when the door opened and I heard a familiar voice. It was Isabella Heathcliff and she was in a terrible state.

«Don’t be scared, Nelly, it’s only me!» she panted, «I’ve run all the way from Wuthering Heights, and I can’t count the number of falls I’ve had. Oh, I’m aching all over, but I can’t stay. I just need to collect a few clothes and then take a carriage on to Gimmerton.»

Her hair and clothes were dripping wet^[69], and all she was wearing was a short-sleeved dress and a thin pair of shoes. She had a deep cut under one ear, and her face was covered in scratches and bruises. I also noticed that she was expecting a baby.

«My dear young lady,» I exclaimed, «you must at least get warm and dry and let me bandage your wound, before you go any further.»

She agreed to rest by the fire for a few minutes and, while I was looking after her, she told me her sad story…

«I daren’t stay long,» she began, «or Heathcliff will find me and force me to go back to the Heights. He was in such a fury when I left! I wish I could stay to comfort Edgar and help you with the baby, but Heathcliff would never allow it. He hates me with a passion and he loves to make me suffer. I can’t believe I ever liked him. How could Cathy have loved such a monster?»

«Hush! He’s a human being,» I said. «There are worse men than him!»

«He’s not a human being,» she replied, «he’s a fiend! And I can’t feel sorry for him now, not if he wept tears of blood for Cathy. But you ask me why I left…

«Yesterday, you know, was the day of Cathy’s funeral, and Heathcliff came back after six days away, looking like a savage wolf with his cannibal teeth gleaming in the dark. That night, Hindley tried to shoot Heathcliff with his rifle, and he would have succeeded if only Heathcliff hadn’t been so strong. Heathcliff didn’t stop beating Hindley until he was black and blue, and I just watched it all and wished I had the strength to overpower the brute myself.

«The next morning I decided it was time for my revenge. I waited until Hindley was prowling around the house, ready to pay Heathcliff back for the night before. Then I began to torment my husband in the best way I knew – by telling him that he could never have made Cathy happy! This made him so wild that he threw a knife at me, which cut me in the neck, and I ran screaming out of the kitchen. Hindley heard the scream and leaped on Heathcliff. Then I left them fighting like bears and ran all the way here!»

Isabella stopped her story. The carriage had arrived to take her to Gimmerton and she was anxious to be gone. Before she left, she kissed Edgar’s and Cathy’s portraits, and scooped her little dog up into her arms.

I believe she settled somewhere near London, and a few months later she had a son. She and Edgar wrote to each other regularly, but Isabella never came to Yorkshire again.

Somehow, Heathcliff learned from the servants about his son. Once, when I saw him in the village, he stopped and spoke to me.

«I hear Isabella’s called my son Linton. She must want me to hate him too!»

«I don’t think she wants you to know anything about him,» I replied frostily.

«Well, she can keep him now,» he said grimly. «But one day I’ll have him, she can be sure of that!»