Heathcliff's Tale Read Online Free PDF Page B

led me from the doorway of the study into the hall, and lightning in shafts of a terrible brightness pierced the pitch blackness. ‘My eyes are bad’, the holy man cried. ‘Help me, Mr Newby, I cannot see my way to the front door!’
    As might have been expected, a dreadful wind now rose, and the study door slammed shut as thestrong, freezing air blew in under the portals and filled the hall with a tomb-like atmosphere. I truly thought I would die then, Uncle, and feel no shame in confessing that I was as eager to discover the front door as was Mr Brontë. I wished only to depart then, as you may imagine, and if I lacked a manuscript, I could not place this as the chief of my priorities.
    But then, Uncle, as is so often the case with a thunderstorm, there came the rain. It was not ordinary rain—God save my soul, it was black rain and I could swear on that—though naturally, as it was dark outside as well as in, and I saw this through the one window of the hall, I could have been mistaken. But it was loud rain; it battered down as if a ton of hailstones had been added to the load. And when, groping along a wall, I found the door, the wind and rain together blew it shut with force right on my fingers. ‘Damn you, open it!’ was all the compassion I received from the gaunt old vicar at this; and I confess I thought for a moment that I led Mr Heathcliff and no other across the stone floor of the Parsonage.
    When I was saved, it was by the very creature who had assisted my entrance earlier. Tabby, as I recognised she must be, pushed the kitchen door ajar and appeared, an oil-lamp in her hand. The wick was low and the flame guttered wildly; but it survived a crossing of the hall, and at her command the dog Keeper, annoyed no doubt to find a dry mouthful of cretonne and cottons for his pains, let go of me and slunk back to the kitchen. ‘The gentleman cannot go out in this weather’, said the crone, speaking up into the face of the parson—and very wild he looked by now, as if the storm had frightened him more even than it had me—‘he can go tothe upstairs study for the night, surely, Mr Brontë? There’s no fire laid there—but it is best that he goes in there, as Miss Charlotte has given her consent, sir’.
    So it was, Uncle, that I avoided a death by lightning or immolation on New Year’s Eve at Haworth.
    Yet I give my solemn word that I would give my all to have run out in the storm, however vile the consequences. For, by staying the night at the Parsonage—well, I can say merely that I might have thought myself ill-treated earlier by my hosts (and worse treated by the cruel storm that raged out across the moor)—but there was worse to come.

Chapter Four
    Letter from Thomas Cautley Newby to his nephew Henry Newby
.
    February 3rd 1849
    Dear Henry,
    I am in receipt of your various missives concerning your (supremely unsuccessful) visit to Haworth Parsonage.
    I will not say here that I feel shame at owning a kinsman of your intellectual calibre, which is limited indeed; for on your mother’s side, as was accepted at the time of the marriage of your parents, there were—and remain still—relatives of a markedly low ability, being in some cases virtually illiterate, and certainly, in the case of Hugh who came for a week to work here as a clerk, either innumerate or frankly dishonest.
    No, I will not admit to shame. But I must sound a note of reproach. Your last letter, ending as it did with the (highly improbable, indeed impossible) visitation you describe, I have destroyed, in fear that one day a descendant in this illustrious business might discover it in our files. We may deal in fiction, Master Henry—but we do not trade in lies. I can conclude only that a natural exuberance of spirits combined with strong liquor on the occasion of NewYear’s Eve last, led you to hallucinate. What aggravates me particularly is your insistence of