The boy was ailing.
Young Linton Heathcliff lay insensible in his bed, sweat soaking his pale face. Catherine Linton sat in vigil over him: she had not moved from her chair throughout the whole day, though he showed no acknowledgment of her presence, nor even gave a sign that he was aware of it.
Heathcliff rarely so much as entered the room. He sat, instead, in his dead lover's room, his dark face lined with thought.
He had not meant for the boy to die this early. If Linton died before he woke, Heathcliff would gain nothing, and that wretched sop Edgar could pass his estate on to his Catherine, and where would Heathcliff's long-planned revenge be then?
No, he thought, something must be done.
Hareton was a strong lad, and nimble, and Heathcliff's instructions had been to act with all speed. So, with no end of threats ringing in his ears, and no doubt in his mind that they would be enacted if Dr. Kenneth were not back at the Heights in time, the young man had slipped easily onto the finest horse in the stable, caring nothing for bridle nor saddle, and galloped forth, bareback, towards the setting sun.
Catherine's fingers relaxed on the book Hareton had given her as a welcome means of distraction; her eyelids drooped; her body slumped into her chair; her vision blurred. How long had she been awake? She could not tell: the sun might have given her some indication, but whilst he had been conscious, Linton had complained bitterly that the light hurt his eyes, until she had drawn the heavy curtains and blocked out everything there was of the outside world.
The sun, the moon, the rolling moors, all were obscured in the name of Linton's meagre comfort. She had only a candle for light, and had not so much as thought to draw the curtains again, even when Linton at last settled to a fevered sleep. Summoning all the strength she had left, raising arms that ached from her still, silent vigil, she stretched her fingers toward his face.
His skin was cold.
Heathcliff was enraged; but the doctor, when he had arrived, had needed barely a glance to confirm the plain truth of the matter, and there was no rage in all the world that would overcome it. Linton was dead.
And now he sat in the dark, leaving the others to mourn Linton's passing. He had the boy's will, had already ensured, whilst Linton lay upon his deathbed, that his son would leave his estate entire to his vengeful father… But the boy owned nothing.
So much work, so much planning, so many threats, so much careful manipulation: all wasted.
The candle had burned itself out long ago: Heathcliff knew this room as well as he knew his own body. Even the moonlight that spilled weakly through the window was unnecessary. Heathcliff had paced this room time and time again, learning its arrangement by heart as though by doing so, he might reunite himself with a part of his Cathy. It was a futile exercise, he knew; no matter how many times he lay in her bed, or ran his fingers across the picture-frame that hung above the fireplace, or read through her diary, tracing the words 'Cathy' and 'Heathcliff' with his finger over and over again…
His head slumped, exhausted, across the writing-desk, the scuffed and pitted surface betraying the movements, long ago, of Cathy's hand as she wrote his name next to hers. (She had written other things besides, it was true; but what did such trivialities matter to him?)
He thought himself asleep: perhaps he was. But it was the tapping that roused him from his aching slumber, the violent beating upon the window-pane that sounded quite different from the gentle patter of the rain.
He knew that sound.
Catherine Linton, newly bereaved of the only friend she had ever known, lies grieving in the bed that he had died in…
"Cathy!"
Catherine Linton cannot sleep, her eyes are too dry; she has wept the last of her tears…
"Cathy!"
Catherine Linton, the girl without a friend, ruminates on the nature of grief…
"CATHY!"
Catherine burst into the room next door, heedless of Heathcliff's strict insistence upon privacy. The candle she had brought with her showed little in the gloom beyond, but a flash of lightning gave her the scene, all in one brief, startling moment of blinding clarity that left the image burning on the inside of her eyes as the darkness fell once more.
Heathcliff, kneeling in desperate supplication on the bare stone floor, his arms stretched forth through the open window, a name on his lips borne aloft by a scream.
"CATHY!"
It was enough to deafen her: his voice was ragged with screaming and crying and pleading all at once, and still he raged his one-word defiance at the night sky.
She could not think, her mind was blank, and she knew not what she could do…
A push at her side, and Hareton shoved his way past her towards the man he loved as a father. His eyes were alert, not a trace of slumber in them, as though he had not even gone to bed. She wondered idly, for a moment, whether Hareton even slept, or whether perhaps he did so with his eyes open, so as to be ready for the next day's labours.
And now he was at Heathcliff's side, his hand on the broken man's shoulder, and muttering words that Catherine herself could not make out above the rain and the thunder and the sobbing.
For Heathcliff truly was weeping now, his moans carrying somehow above the roar of the storm, so that she could discern his tortured words.
"Cathy, no! No, my love, don't leave me! Stay, stay! Oh, my love, no, please! Return here, only come back, and torment me but a little while more – don't you abandon me in this hell!"
After that, he made no sound that would translate into words, but only wept and sobbed and gasped, as Hareton, with what little assistance Catherine could give, helped Heathcliff into the bed.
"It takes him like this, sometimes," Hareton told her in a confidential whisper, "especially when there's a rainstorm upon the moors. I don't know what it is that ails him, but you need not worry – he shall be back to his old self by t'morn, no doubt; he always is."
And, indeed, Heathcliff was already quiet as they closed the window, though he seemed to lie in an unnatural torpor, his face so pale as to be almost white, and his lips moved ever on, even as his eyes began to close.
Catherine was no great lip-reader, and the darkness in the room hindered her efforts, but she could pick out just a few choice words as he mouthed them silently to the empty air before him.
"No… Don't close the window… Cathy, my love… Drive me mad…"
Hareton beckoned her forth, and they closed the door, and left him in the dark.