John Harding 2-Book Gothic Collection. John Harding

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ following day we took a picnic down to the lake. Again Miss Taylor walked around it until she came to the spot on the shore nearest the place where Miss Whitaker had tragicked. On the way she hadn’t spoken, but pulled ahead of us; it seemed she couldn’t wait to get there, as if tugged by some invisible force. We spread out our food and Giles and I ate heartily, our appetites stimulated by the fresh air, but Miss Taylor so picked at her food that it made me watch her in a way I never had before at a meal and notice that she made no attempt to eat anything. The day was hot and after we had finished, Giles, who had brought his fishing pole, settled himself down on the bank to fish. Miss Taylor outed a book from her reticule and began to read.

      I suddenly felt exhausted. The intensity of the sun, the oppressiveness of the air, its closeness presaging a thunderstorm, difficulted it to breathe. I tireded and headached; my limbs heavied and I lay back on the picnic rug and, no matter how I tried to fight it, could not prevent my eyelids from drooping and then shutting. I thought that if I closed them for only one minute, that’s all, a single paltry minute, I should recover my senses.

      I know not how long I slept. At some point I heard the drone of a bee, the whine of mosquitoes, the gentle disturbance of the lake’s surface as a fish stirred, and then such a silence, such a stillness in the air, that something icy fingered my spine and tickled my neck. I instanted something was wrong and bolt-uprighted and eye-opened all in one movement.

      I frighted naturally for Giles; he was my first thought, but there he was, down by the shore, sitting over his pole just as he had been before I slept, so that I did not know whether I had unconscioused for a mere minute or for an hour or even longer; there was no way of telling. I looked around for Miss Taylor but could see no sign of her. Her book lay open and face down upon the picnic rug, but she was nowhere to be found. Then something in that stillness, something in the icy tiptoe up and down my spine, said to me to look at the lake, not down at the shore where Giles sat, but at the lake itself, across to the middle, at the spot I never wanted to look at, the place where Miss Whitaker had misfortuned, and there I saw her, Miss Taylor, out upon the water, the most amazing sight, so that I thought I dreamed or hallucinated, except that it was all so real. She was on the surface of the water, but without any boat. She was standing there, in the very centre of the lake, the water lapping about her shoes, although, as I had good reason to know, there was nothing there to stand upon, no submerged jetty, no little island or sand bar. She was gazing down at the water with a melancholy expression, or rather something of that in her posture, for I could not discern her features from so great a distance, and then, sensing my eyes upon her, she looked up and stared right at me and, it felt, through me, so that I imagined her eyes glazed over, blank like those of a sculpted figure, and I couldn’t tell whether or no she saw me at all. Suddenly she began to walk across the water, sending up little splashes every time her feet struck its surface, striding fast and purposefully toward me, so that I had but one thought, namely to run, to run away from this terrible vision.

      ‘Giles!’ I called, for always I feared me most for my little brother. ‘Giles! Look up!’ I rose from the ground and began to downhill to him. He showed no sign of having heard me nor of having seen the…the thing upon the water. ‘Giles!’ I essayed again. I was nearly upon him now and the figure on the water was driving for us still.

      This time he heard me. He looked up at me, bemused. ‘What, Flo? What’s the matter? You shouldn’t go shouting like that, you’ll scare the fish.’

      ‘Look out upon the lake,’ I gasped, reaching him and putting my arm about his shoulders, to steer his gaze. ‘Look!’

      He looked instead at me, eyes alarmed, evidently frightened by my agitation, but after a moment did as I injuncted and looked out across the water. I watched his face, awaiting his reaction. He screwed up his eyes, puzzled, then turned to me.

      ‘What? What am I meant to be looking at, Flo?’

      I shook him somewhat. ‘Do you not see? Do you not see her?’

      ‘Who, Flo? Who?’

      ‘Why, Miss Taylor, of course, walking across the lake!’

      He stared me hard. ‘Don’t be silly, Flo, how could she do that?’

      I shook him roughly. ‘You must see! You must!’ I turned him to face the lake once more. ‘Tell me you do not see the witch, striding over the water!’

      Giles rubbed his eyes with one hand. ‘I – I think I do. I – I, yes, Flo, I see her! I really can, you know.’

      I followed his gaze across the water. There was no one there. She was gone.

      I released my grip upon him. It obvioused he was lying to appease me and had seen nothing at all untoward. He looked up at me, muting an appeal. ‘I think I saw her, Flo.’

      I stared at him a moment, then looked once more at the lake, which nothinged still. I looked upon the empty water, watching the breeze wrinkle its surface, wondering me if it had happened at all. There was a rustle behind me, the sound of leaves in the wind, and, even before she spoke, I knew she was there.

      ‘Well, children,’ she said, ‘I think that is enough relaxation for one day, don’t you? We must be getting back to our work.’ I turned and looked her in the eye. It was the snake’s eye that gazed back at me, sure of itself, and I certained she knew I had seen her out on the lake, and what was worse, much worse, that she didn’t in the least bit care.

       16

      At supper that evening I resolved to observe Miss Taylor. I had thought of telling Mrs Grouse about the incident at the lake but in the end decided not to, for I knew I would not be believed. ‘It’s just one of your imaginings, my dear,’ she would say. For was I not this strange child who nightwalked and before the days of governesses spent hours (as she thought, she didn’t know, of course, about my librarying or towering) wandering the house and grounds alone, daydreaming? Moreover, if I told her and she disbelieved, she would doubtless mention the matter to Miss Taylor and all would be out in the open; our new governess would know that I had appealed for help – and failed – and that I was her enemy, if indeed she unsuspected that already. Instead I would own-counsel, speak only when spoken to during the meal, and so allow her free rein to talk and laugh with Giles while I kept watch upon her without obviousing to do so.

      The meal confirmed what I had first awared of during our picnic. Miss Taylor cut up her meat, laid down her knife, took her fork in her right hand, speared a piece of meat, raised it to her lips, but then thought of some new thing to say to my brother and laid down the fork again. This happened time and again. At one point she complained that Giles had not eaten enough greens. There were none left in the serving bowl, so she took his fork from him, speared several pieces of broccoli on her own plate and transferred them to his. It was all neatly done, sleight-of-handed slick as a magician, and, were I not watching carefully, I would never have known. But I saw how clever she had been. The meat having been cut up and dispersed around her plate, it in no way seemed to amount to the single chop with which she had begun; some of the broccoli that had been on her plate having been switched to Giles’s, there was no way of telling how much she herself had actually eaten. Except that I knew. I who had been hawking her all the while, I saw that not a morsel of food had passed her lips; in short, she had eaten nothing at all. And when I thought about it I was sure that, other than that mad moment when she seized the waffle from Giles and pecked at it like some demented bird of prey, I had never seen her consume a single thing.

      When the meal was over I unobserved into the kitchen, where I found Meg emptying the plates into СКАЧАТЬ