Not only are they made of the same stuff, but Heathcliff is her soul.

“’I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you.  What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here?  My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries ... my great thought in living is himself....  Nelly!  I am Heathcliff!  He’s always, always in my mind:  not as a pleasure, any more than I am a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.’”

That is her “secret”.

Of course, there is Cathy’s other secret—­her dream, which passes for Emily Bronte’s “pretty piece of Paganism”.  But it is only one side of Emily Bronte.  And it is only one side of Catherine Earnshaw.  When Heathcliff turns from her for a moment in that last scene of passion, she says:  “’Oh, you see, Nelly, he would not relent a moment to keep me out of the grave. That is how I’m loved!  Well, never mind.  That is not my Heathcliff.  I shall love mine yet; and take him with me:  he’s in my soul.  And,’ she added musingly, ’the thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all.  I’m tired of being enclosed here.  I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there:  not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it and in it.  Nelly, you think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength; you are sorry for me—­very soon that will be altered.  I shall be sorry for you.  I shall be incomparably above and beyond you all.’”

True, adoration of Earth, the All-Mother, runs like a choric hymn through all the tragedy.  Earth is the mother and the nurse of these children.  They are brought to her for their last bed, and she gives them the final consolation.

Yet, after all, the end of this wild northern tragedy is far enough from Earth, the All-Mother.  The tumult of Wuthering Heights ceases when Heathcliff sickens.  It sinks suddenly into the peace and silence of exhaustion.  And the drama closes, not in hopeless gloom, the agony of damned souls, but in redemption, reconciliation.

Catherine, the child of Catherine and of Edgar Linton, loves Hareton, the child of Hindley Earnshaw.  The evil spirit that possessed these two dies with the death of Heathcliff.  The younger Catherine is a mixed creature, half-spiritualized by much suffering.  Hareton is a splendid animal, unspiritualized and unredeemed.  Catherine redeems him; and you gather that by that act of redemption, somehow, the souls of Catherine and Heathcliff are appeased.

The whole tremendous art of the book is in this wringing of strange and terrible harmony out of raging discord.  It ends on a sliding cadence, soft as a sigh of peace only just conscious after pain.

“I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next the moor:  the middle one grey and half-buried in heath; Edgar Linton’s only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff’s still bare.