For several days following that evening, Mr. Heathcliff avoided us at mealtimes. Although he did not formally forbid Hareton and Catherine from the room, he chose to absent himself, finding a single meal every twenty-four hours sufficient sustenance.
One April night, after the household had gone to bed, I heard him leave the house. He did not return by morning. It was a beautiful spring day; the grass was vibrant after the recent showers, and the apple trees were in full bloom. After breakfast, Catherine and Hareton were busy in the garden, a task that had become their shared joy. Suddenly, Catherine ran back to the house, looking perplexed. She told us that she had encountered Mr. Heathcliff near the gate.
"He told me to go away as fast as I could," she remarked. "But he looked so different—not his usual self at all. He seemed almost bright, wild, and exhilarated!"
Curious and concerned, I went inside. Heathcliff was standing at the open door. He was strikingly pale and his hands trembled, yet there was a strange, joyful glitter in his eyes that transformed his entire face. When I offered him breakfast, he refused, speaking with a touch of contempt as if he knew I was trying to guess the cause of his good mood.
"I don’t think it’s wise to wander all night in this damp weather," I cautioned. "You look as if you’re catching a fever."
"I feel nothing but pleasure," he replied, "provided you leave me alone. Now, go inside and stop bothering me." As I passed him, I noticed he was breathing rapidly, his chest heaving as if he had been running.
That afternoon, he sat down to dinner with us, appearing ready to make up for his recent fasting. However, just as he took his knife and fork, his appetite seemed to vanish instantly. He stared eagerly toward the window, then rose and walked out into the garden. Hareton followed to ask if we had offended him, but he returned saying the master was not angry—merely impatient to be left alone.
By evening, Heathcliff’s state had grown even more unnatural. A ghostly paleness had settled over his skin, and his teeth were visible in a constant, fixed smile. He wasn't shivering from the cold; rather, his whole frame vibrated like a tight-stretched cord.
"Have you heard some good news, sir?" I asked, unable to stay silent.
"Where would good news come from for me?" he countered. "I am simply hungry, yet I cannot eat. Nelly, tell the others to stay away. I wish to have this place to myself."
When I pressed him for a reason, he let out a short laugh. "Last night I was on the threshold of hell. Today, I am within sight of my heaven. It is barely three feet away! Now, go, and do not pry."
As night fell, I brought a candle to his room. He was leaning against an open window, staring into the darkness of the room rather than out at the hills. The fire had died to ashes, and the air was damp and still. When the candlelight flashed on his face, I jumped in terror. His deep black eyes and ghastly paleness made him look less like a man and more like a goblin.
"Close the window," he said in his familiar voice, mocking my clumsiness with the candle. He refused supper again and went to bed in the paneled room—the very room Catherine Earnshaw had occupied as a child. I spent the night in a state of restless dread, wondering about his mysterious origins and the dark path his life had taken.
The following morning, I found him downstairs conversing with Joseph about farming business. He gave clear directions, but he spoke rapidly and kept glancing aside with that same restless, excited expression. When he sat down for coffee, he ignored the food, his eyes fixed on a spot on the wall only a few feet away. He watched it with such intense interest that he would forget to breathe for several seconds. Whatever he saw seemed to cause him both exquisite pleasure and agonizing pain.
"Mr. Heathcliff!" I cried. "Don't stare as if you're seeing a ghost!"
"Don’t shout so loud," he snapped, his eyes never moving from the empty air. "Tell me, Nelly, are we alone?"
He cleared a space on the table and leaned forward, his fingers clenching and unclenching, completely oblivious to his surroundings. Finally, he grew irritable at my presence and left the house to wander the garden.
The hours crept by anxiously. He returned after midnight and shut himself in the room below. I could hear him pacing restlessly, his steps measuring the floor. Occasionally, he broke the silence with a deep groan or a whispered name—Catherine—spoken with a soul-wrenching tenderness, as if she were standing right beside him.
When day broke, he asked me to send for his lawyer, Mr. Green. "I want to settle my will while I can still think clearly," he muttered. "Though I wish I could simply annihilate everything I own."
"You should rest and eat, sir," I urged. "You look like a man starving himself to death."
"It is not my fault that I cannot rest," he replied. "I am like a man struggling in the water within reach of the shore. I must reach it first; then I will rest. As for my injustices, I repent of nothing. I am too happy, yet not happy enough. My soul’s bliss is killing my body."
He refused my advice to see a minister, insisting that he had nearly attained his own version of heaven. He gave me strict instructions for his burial: he was to be carried to the churchyard in the evening, and the sexton was to ensure the sides of his and Catherine’s coffins were removed so their dust could mingle.
The following night was exceptionally wet; the rain poured down until dawn. As I walked around the house the next morning, I noticed the master’s window swinging open. Fearing he would be drenched, I entered his room with a spare key.
The chamber was silent. I pushed aside the bed-panels and found Mr. Heathcliff lying on his back. His eyes were wide open, keen and fierce, and his lips were parted in a sneer that revealed his white teeth. I thought he was smiling at me, but when I touched his hand, which rested on the windowsill, I realized he was dead. The rain had washed his face and throat, and he was already cold and stiff.
I tried to close his eyes, to extinguish that frightful gaze of triumph, but they would not shut. He seemed to mock my efforts even in death. Joseph was summoned, but he refused to touch the body, claiming the devil had finally carried off his soul. Only Hareton truly suffered. The young man, whom Heathcliff had wronged the most, sat by the corpse all night, weeping bitterly and kissing the savage face that everyone else feared.
We buried him as he had wished. Only Hareton, the sexton, and I remained to see the grave covered with green sods. To this day, the local country folks swear that his spirit "walks." They tell stories of meeting him on the moors or seeing two figures looking out of the chamber window on rainy nights.
"They are moving to the Grange, then?" I asked Nelly, as she finished her tale.
"Yes," she answered, "as soon as Catherine and Hareton are married on New Year’s Day. Joseph will stay here to mind the kitchen, and the rest of the house will be shut up."
At that moment, the garden gate swung open, and the two lovers returned from their walk. They looked so happy and fearless that I felt like an intruder. I quietly slipped out through the kitchen, leaving them to their future.
On my walk home, I stopped at the churchyard. I found the three headstones on the slope near the moor: the middle one grey and weathered, Edgar Linton’s covered in moss, and Heathcliff’s still bare. I lingered there under the calm sky, watching the moths flutter among the flowers and listening to the soft wind. I wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in such a quiet earth.