"Gaskell, Elizabeth C - The Life Of Charlotte Bronte - vol 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gaskell Elizabeth C)

characterised in the Preface to the second edition of "Wuthering
Heights", as containing a refusal so delicate, reasonable, and
courteous, as to be more cheering than some acceptances):

"Your objection to the want of varied interest in the tale is, I
am aware, not without grounds; yet it appears to me that it might
be published without serious risk, if its appearance were
speedily followed up by another work from the same pen, of a more
striking and exciting character. The first work might serve as an
introduction, and accustom the public to the author's the success
of the second might thereby be rendered more probable. I have a
second narrative in three volumes, now in progress, and nearly
completed, to which I have endeavoured to impart a more vivid
interest than belongs to "The Professor". In about a month I hope
to finish it, so that if a publisher were found for "The
Professor", the second narrative might follow as soon as was
deemed advisable; and thus the interest of the public (if any
interest was aroused) might not be suffered to cool. Will you be
kind enough to favour me with your judgment on this plan?"

While the minds of the three sisters were in this state of
suspense, their long-expected friend came to pay her promised
visit. She was with them at the beginning of the glowing August
of that year. They were out on the moors for the greater part of
the day basking in the golden sunshine, which was bringing on an
unusual plenteousness of harvest, for which, somewhat later,
Charlotte expressed her earnest desire that there should be a
thanksgiving service in all the churches. August was the season
of glory for the neighbourhood of Haworth. Even the smoke, lying
in the valley between that village and Keighley, took beauty from
the radiant colours on the moors above, the rich purple of the
heather bloom calling out an harmonious contrast in the tawny
golden light that, in the full heat of summer evenings, comes
stealing everywhere through the dun atmosphere of the hollows.
And up, on the moors, turning away from all habitations of men,
the royal ground on which they stood would expand into long
swells of amethyst-tinted hills, melting away into aerial tints;
and the fresh and fragrant scent of the heather, and the "murmur
of innumerable bees," would lend a poignancy to the relish with
which they welcomed their friend to their own true home on the
wild and open hills.

There, too, they could escape from the Shadow in the house below.

Throughout this time--during all these confidences--not a word
was uttered to their friend of the three tales in London; two
accepted and in the press--one trembling in the balance of a
publisher's judgment; nor did she hear of that other story
"nearly completed," lying in manuscript in the grey old parsonage
down below. She might have her suspicions that they all wrote