Heathcliff's Tale Read Online Free PDF

concealment of the rendition of the horrible events which befell me: you will consider your youngest nephew an unsuitable emissary, and you will doubtless transfer similar requests for the finding and rendering to you of manuscripts legally yours to my brothers Horace and Edward. I cannot feel reproach or, I must admit, sorrow, if you do. For never again will I go in search of property written by a nonexistent author who, when investigated, transpires to be a ghost.
    Only my determination not to betray your trust in me, dear Uncle, led me finally to open the drawer of the dresser—and, watched with some alarm by our good Susan, remove the offending last segmentof the letter, seal and post it off to you. Make of it what you will. I can have no more to do with Bells, Brontës or any other person with connection past or present to Haworth Parsonage.
    The Reverend Patrick Brontë, once I had come to understand that this was not the evil Mr Heathcliff whose confessions I had just read, answered my questions at first with politeness and consideration, No, Mr Ellis Bell was not at home—and nor, as the holy man continued in what I heard as a sepulchral tone, would he ever be.
    â€˜Mr Bell is—deceased, Sir?’ I said, for you, Uncle, had after all informed me that the works of this late author were in your copyright for many years to come. I wished, I may assure you, solely to speed up the proceedings; and by showing I was cognisant of the sad state of Mr Bell, to assist the Reverend Mr Brontë with his search for the missing manuscript.
    â€˜Ellis Bell is not known to me’, came the reply, and I could see the vicar was accustomed to chide his parishioners regularly, should they overstep the limits of good behaviour. ‘You are in the wrong house, Mr Newby, and I will be grateful to find you have departed from it within the next minute.’
    â€˜But—’ I began.
    â€˜Mr Newby, I believe you must have entered the Parsonage by the front door’, was all I received by way of cure for my bewilderment. For if the author was not even known here, then you, Uncle, had surely been gravely mistaken in your directions. ‘Ellis Bell, care of Brontë’, I said, remembering your strict instruction that I should not permit myself to be ‘fobbed off by anyone attempting to hold on to the manuscript and by so doing contravene the regulations regarding copyright. Your £25, Uncle, was uppermost in my mind at that moment; and for thefirst time in my life I own I felt a slight stirring of interest in the law. Did I have the right, if this vicar held back the goods from me consistently, to arrest the man as a citizen and take him to the courts so that my complaint could be heard?
    â€˜You will kindly leave now, Mr Newby, or I shall call the dog’, my host proceeded to announce. ‘Keeper!’ he shouted out, not waiting any time to carry out his threat. ‘Keeper, come here!’
    All I shall report from this moment on, Uncle, may seem so improbable and extraordinary as to lack veracity—but I do not lie; neither, God forbid! do I jest.
    A huge dog, violent in appearance and growling menacingly, rushed from the kitchen, the door of which seemed to have been flung open by an invisible hand before closing again abruptly. At the same time, as the dog ran to sink its teeth in my leg—and it did, dear Uncle—your brother’s Benjamin was grateful indeed to have secreted the bag of papers in a pocket of the greatcoat borrowed from my father, and thus doubly important as a means of evading the jaws of this Cerberus—at the same time, as I was about to confide to you, the good Lord himself intervened, though whether the Reverend Mr Brontë welcomed the intervention cannot be known.
    A thunderclap—a series of thunderclaps, rather, each louder than the last—sounded right over the roof of the Parsonage. We were in darkness now, Mr Brontë and I, as he