Chapter XVI — Wuthering Heights

About midnight Catherine bears a puny seven-months daughter, the Cathy you saw at the Heights. Two hours later the mother dies, never regaining sense enough to miss Heathcliff or know Edgar. Nelly laments Edgar left without an heir; the infant seems unwelcomed at first, though they redeem the neglect afterwards.

At sunrise Edgar lies exhausted beside her corpse, which looks perfectly peaceful. Nelly feels a holy calm watching in the chamber of death and doubts, with Lockwood, whether Catherine can be happy beyond. She steals out to tell Heathcliff, finding him drenched among the trees. He already knows: She's dead. Damn you all. When he asks if Catherine mentioned him, Nelly lies that her senses never returned.

Heathcliff prays she may wake in torment and haunt him, dashes his head against a tree, and howls. Until Friday's funeral Edgar guards the open coffin while Heathcliff haunts outside. Nelly opens a window so he can farewell the body and swaps a locket curl for his own black lock. Hindley is invited but absent; Isabella is not asked. Catherine is buried on a moor-side slope of the kirkyard, not with the Lintons.

The unwelcomed infant and moor-side grave mark how death closes Catherine's body but leaves every wound open among the living. Edgar guards grief in the chamber while Heathcliff demands haunt and forces one last intimacy through the window. The child who carries her name enters a house already shattered by the love triangle that killed her.