E. F. Benson: Complete Short Stories Collection (70+ Classic, Ghost, Spook, Supernatural, Mystery & Haunting Tales). Эдвард Бенсон
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“Why, it’s freezing in here,” I said. “What donkeys servants are! It never occurs to them that you want fires in cold weather, and no fires in hot weather.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake don’t light the fire,” said he, “it’s the warmest muggiest evening I ever remember.”
I stared at him in astonishment. My hands were shaking with the cold. He saw this.
“Why, you are shivering!” he said. “Have you caught a chill? But as to the room being cold let us look at the thermometer.”
There was one on the writing-table.
“Sixty-five,” he said.
There was no disputing that, nor did I want to, for at that moment it suddenly struck us, dimly and distantly, that It was “coming through.” I felt it like some curious internal vibration.
“Hot or cold, I must go and dress,” I said.
Still shivering, but feeling as if I was breathing some rarefied exhilarating air, I went up to my room. My clothes were already laid out, but, by an oversight, no hot water had been brought up, and I rang for my man. He came up almost at once, but he looked scared, or, to my already-startled senses, he appeared so.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“Nothing, sir,” he said, and he could hardly articulate the words. “I thought you rang.”
“Yes. Hot water. But what’s the matter?”
He shifted from one foot to the other.
“I thought I saw a lady on the stairs,” he said, “coming up close behind me. And the front-door bell hadn’t rung that I heard.”
“Where did you think you saw her?” I asked.
“On the stairs. Then on the landing outside the drawing-room door, sir,” he said. “She stood there as if she didn’t know whether to go in or not.”
“One—one of the servants,” I said. But again I felt that It was coming through.
“No, sir. It was none of the servants,” he said.
“Who was it then?”
“Couldn’t see distinctly, sir, it was dim-like. But I thought it was Mrs. Lorimer.”
“Oh, go and get me some hot water,” I said.
But he lingered; he was quite clearly frightened.
At this moment the front door bell rang. It was just seven, and already Philip had come with brutal punctuality while I was not yet half dressed.
“That’s Dr. Enderly,” I said. “Perhaps if he is on the stairs you may be able to pass the place where you saw the lady.”
Then quite suddenly there rang through the house a scream, so terrible, so appalling in its agony and supreme terror, that I simply stood still and shuddered, unable to move. Then by an effort so violent that I felt as if something must break, I recalled the power of motion, and ran downstairs, my man at my heels, to meet Philip who was running up from the ground floor. He had heard it too.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “What was that?”
Together we went into the drawing-room. Jack was lying in front of the fireplace, with the chair in which he had been sitting a few minutes before overturned. Philip went straight to him and bent over him, tearing open his white shirt.
“Open all the windows,” he said, “the place reeks.”
We flung open the windows, and there poured in so it seemed to me, a stream of hot air into the bitter cold. Eventually Philip got up.
“He is dead,” he said. “Keep the windows open. The place is still thick with chloroform.”
Gradually to my sense the room got warmer, to Philip’s the drug-laden atmosphere dispersed.
But neither my servant nor I had smelt anything at all.
A couple of hours later there came a telegram from Davos for me. It was to tell me to break the news of Daisy’s death to Jack, and was sent by her sister. She supposed he would come out immediately. But he had been gone two hours now.
I left for Davos next day, and learned what had happened. Daisy had been suffering for three days from a little abscess which had to be opened, and, though the operation was of the slightest, she had been so nervous about it that the doctor gave her chloroform. She made a good recovery from the anesthetic, but an hour later had a sudden attack of syncope, and had died that night at a few minutes before eight, by Central European time, corresponding to seven in English time. She had insisted that Jack should be told nothing about this little operation till it was over, since the matter was quite unconnected with her general health, and she did not wish to cause him needless anxiety.
And there the story ends. To my servant there came the sight of a woman outside the drawing-room door, where Jack was, hesitating about her entrance, at the moment when Daisy’s soul hovered between the two worlds; to me there came—I do not think it is fanciful to suppose this—the keen exhilarating cold of Davos; to Philip there came the fumes of chloroform. And to Jack, I must suppose, came his wife. So he joined her.
The Countess of Lowndes Square, and Other Stories
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