الفصل الفصل 16 · 第16章

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.