The Black Reaper: Tales of Terror by Bernard Capes. Bernard Capes
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Название: The Black Reaper: Tales of Terror by Bernard Capes
Автор: Bernard Capes
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Ужасы и Мистика
isbn: 9780008249083
isbn:
Now at once the women saw what I would be at, and full a score of them snatched up their babes and followed me. And here we were reckless for ourselves; but we knelt the innocents in one close line across the neck of land, so that the Black Reaper should not find space between any of them to swing his scythe. And having done this, we fell back with our hearts bubbling in our breasts, and we stood panting and watched.
He had paused over that one full sheaf of his reaping; but now, with the sound of the women’s running, he seized his weapon again and set to upon the narrow belt of corn that yet separated him from the children. But presently, coming out upon the tender array, his scythe stopped and trailed in his hand, and for a full minute he stood like a figure of stone. Then thrice he walked slowly backwards and forwards along the line, seeking for an interval whereby he might pass; and the children laughed at him like silver bells, showing no fear, and perchance meeting that of love in his eyes that was hidden from us.
Then of a sudden he came to before the midmost of the line, and, while we drew our breath like dying souls, stooped and snapped his blade across his knee, and, holding the two parts in his hand, turned and strode back into the shadow of the dripping well. There arrived, he paused once more, and, twisting him about, waved his hand once to us and vanished into the blackness. But there were those who affirmed that in that instant of his turning, his face was revealed, and that it was a face radiant and beautiful as an angel’s.
Such is the history of the wild judgment that befell us, and by grace of the little children was foregone; and such was the stranger whose name no man ever heard tell, but whom many have since sought to identify with that spirit of the pestilence that entered into men’s hearts and confounded them, so that they saw visions and were afterwards confused in their memories.
But this I may say, that when at last our courage would fetch us to that little field of death, we found it to be all blackened and blasted, so as nothing would take root there then or ever since; and it was as if, after all the golden sand of the hour-glass was run away and the lives of the most impious with it, the destroyer saw fit to stay his hand for sake of the babes that he had pronounced innocent, and for such as were spared to witness to His judgment. And this I do here, with a heart as contrite as if it were the morrow of the visitation, the which with me it ever has remained.
‘My grandfather,’ said the banjo, ‘drank “dog’s-nose”, my father drank “dog’s-nose”, and I drink “dog’s-nose”. If that ain’t heredity, there’s no virtue in the board schools.’
‘Ah!’ said the piccolo, ‘you’re always a-boasting of your science. And so, I suppose, your son’ll drink “dog’s-nose”, too?’
‘No,’ retorted the banjo, with a rumbling laugh, like wind in the bung-hole of an empty cask; ‘for I ain’t got none. The family ends with me; which is a pity, for I’m a full-stop to be proud on.’
He was an enormous, tun-bellied person – a mere mound of expressionless flesh, whose size alone was an investment that paid a perpetual dividend of laughter. When, as with the rest of his company, his face was blackened, it looked like a specimen coal on a pedestal in a museum.
There was Christmas company in the Good Intent, and the sanded tap-room, with its trestle tables and sprigs of holly stuck under sooty beams, reeked with smoke and the steam of hot gin and water.
‘How much could you put down of a night, Jack?’ said a little grinning man by the door.
‘Why,’ said the banjo, ‘enough to lay the dustiest ghost as ever walked.’
‘Could you, now?’ said the little man.
‘Ah!’ said the banjo, chuckling. ‘There’s nothing like settin’ one sperit to lay another; and there I could give you proof number two of heredity.’
‘What! Don’t you go for to say you ever see’d a ghost?’
‘Haven’t I? What are you whisperin’ about, you blushful chap there by the winder?’
‘I was only remarkin’, sir, ’twere snawin’ like the devil!’
‘Is it? Then the devil has been misjudged these eighteen hundred and ninety odd years.’
‘But did you ever see a ghost?’ said the little grinning man, pursuing his subject.
‘No, I didn’t, sir,’ mimicked the banjo, ‘saving in coffee grounds. But my grandfather in his cups see’d one; which brings us to number three in the matter of heredity.’
‘Give us the story, Jack,’ said the ‘bones’, whose agued shins were extemporising a rattle on their own account before the fire.
‘Well, I don’t mind,’ said the fat man. ‘It’s seasonable; and I’m seasonable, like the blessed plum-pudden, I am; and the more burnt brandy you set about me, the richer and headier I’ll go down.’
‘You’d be a jolly old pudden to digest,’ said the piccolo.
‘You blow your aggrawation into your pipe and sealing-wax the stops,’ said his friend.
He drew critically at his ‘churchwarden’ a moment or so, leaned forward, emptied his glass into his capacious receptacles, and, giving his stomach a shift, as if to accommodate it to its new burden, proceeded as follows:
‘Music and malt is my nat’ral inheritance. My grandfather blew his “dog’s-nose”, and drank his clarinet like a artist; and my father—’
‘What did you say your grandfather did?’ asked the piccolo.
‘He played the clarinet.’
‘You said he blew his “dog’s-nose”.’
‘Don’t be an ass, Fred!’ said the banjo, aggrieved. ‘How the blazes could a man blow his dog’s nose, unless he muzzled it with a handkercher, and then twisted its tail? He played the clarinet, I say; and my father played the musical glasses, which was a form of harmony pertiklerly genial to him. Amongst us we’ve piped out a good long century – ah! we have, for all I look sich a babby bursting on sops and spoon meat.’
‘What!’ said the little man by the door. ‘You don’t include them cockt hatses in your experience?’
‘My grandfather wore ’em, sir. He wore a play-actin’ coat, too, and buckles to his shoes, when he’d got any; and he and a friend or two made a permanency of “waits” (only they called ’em according to the season), and got their profit goin’ from house to house, principally in the country, and discoursin’ music at the low rate of whatever they could get for it.’
‘Ain’t you comin’ to the ghost, Jack?’ said the little man hungrily.
‘All in course, sir. Well, gentlemen, it was hard times pretty often with my grandfather and his friends, as you may suppose; and never so much as when they had to trudge it across country, with the nor’-easter buzzin’ in their teeth and the snow piled on their cockt hats like lemon sponge on entry dishes. СКАЧАТЬ