Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Robert Louis Stevenson

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      ‘I have had other augery,’ returned Ravenswood, in sepulchral tones, his eyes gleaming with a still wilder fire; ‘and besides, it is in a glorious cause. He told me, sir, as plainly as a living man could speak that he who entered the Plague Cellar should save our Church from it’s (sic.) present wretched state.’

      Any unbiased spectator could have seen that the words of Ravenswood took their birth from fever. The baleful fire in his eyes, the shaking of his emaciated hands, the volubility and wildness of his words all tended to prove the same fact. But in matters of superstition, men gave up their prerogative of common sense in the year 1667. Besides, who is so deaf as he that will not hear. Master Martext wished to believe in the possible renovation of his oppressed Church, and the physical impossibility of the matter did not stick much in his throat.

      ‘A glorious aim, as you say, kinsman,’ he replied – ‘a glorious aim. What is the other augery?’

      ‘It is more certain still. You see here my Bible pierced by the bullet of an erastian dragoon. After the vision, I opened it to seek for some divine command. Spared by a miracle from the course of the ball, I found the command: Seek and ye shall find!’

      For a long time, the preacher sat brooding over the strange revelations of his companion. At last, he raised his head. ‘And will you dare?’ he asked.

      ‘Dare!’ was the only answer: but it was made in a tone so firm and so enthusiastic, that all doubt was stilled in Master Ephraim’s mind.

      ‘The Lord God of Isaac and of Israel guide and assist you! I myself will wait on the landing above to catch what you may say, if you are too suddenly smitten. I suppose I also must die; but essay, my son, to close the door when you come out, lest when I pass, I should be rendered incapable of spreading the secret.’ The minister’s heavy face was idealized by his noble determination.

      Both rose without a word. Ravenswood went first, his eyes scintillating, his cheeks glowing with a hectic flush. As they passed down the stair, Ravenswood said something so incoherent, that Martext supposed he had not heard distinctly: he was too much excited to think of asking into it’s (sic.) meaning.

      At last the minister paused on the landing, whence he could see distinctly a portion of wainscot where some boards less time-stained than the others led him to believe that the cellar door existed.

      Ravenswood continued his descent to a corner of the stair where a large axe was propped against a wall. Three vigorous strokes on the crunching boards, burst in the patched-up entrance. Martext was so pleased that he could not see into the space that lay beyond: he heard Ravenswood give a strange, wild, falsetto laugh which rang hideously through the echoing stair: the sound smote him to the heart: he felt very cold. Ravenswood descended the stair, picked up the lantern, and plunged into the mysterious passage.

      For a space all was terribly still. The light, which fell across the stair from the ragged entrance, grew fainter and fainter. Martext, in an agony of fear and excitement, craned forward over the shaking balustrade, the dim light falling with strange effect, on his wrought and eager visage.

      Suddenly, that hateful laugh burst forth again louder, wilder, higher, more utterly appalling than before. ‘Ha-ah!’ he yelled. ‘See! the plague-spots! for the Church! Glory!’ And again, the demon laugh echoed strangely out into the stair.

      Next instant, a bright light arose in the passage: something highly inflamable, had been lit. The figure of Ravenswood appeared at the entrance, standing out against the light behind. The wild words, the fiendish laugh, the sudden conflagration had all terrified the divine; yet he did not forget his duty to his church.

      ‘Speak,’ he articulated. ‘Speak! What have you heard? ’

      ‘Ha! Ha! I know you!’ replied the madman. ‘You are Sharpe – Sharpe the apostate! Do you think I will tell you! Glory! Glory! Ah! apostate, murderer! Where is the pardon! Five men died yesterday! Give me the King’s letter of mercy! Give it me!’

      And he rushed up towards the other. Martext was rooted to the ground with horror: with eyes protruded, he stood waiting for the madman. Then with a long drawn breath, he turned and fled. Up the stair they ran, the dust rising in clouds, the empty vault of the stair echoing to the maniac’s howls. Master Ephraim plunged desperately into an open door: the room was pitch dark; he flattened himself against the wall. His pursuer almost touched him, as he passed, feeling in every corner. The moment that the way was clear, Martext dashed forth and ran down the stairs again. He did not know what he was doing: his only object was to escape from the touch of his miserable nephew.

      The combustibles in the Plague Cellar had been exceedingly dry surely; for, when Master Ephraim reached that part of the stair in his downward flight, great tongues of flame leapt across the whole path, and curled round the balustrade; while the whole entrance was obscured by pitchy smoke. At no other time would the minister have dared to pass such a barrier. But now, goaded by despair, he plunged through the fire, leapt the remainder of the steps, and fell, half dead with terror, against the massive door.

      Recovering his presence of mind and remembering that every minute he might be overtaken and seized, he strove to withdraw the bolt of the lock. What seemed a century elapsed. At last the lock opened. He looked back: Ravenswood, terrified by the flames, was halting irresolutely on the farther side. With a cry of wild joy, Martext rushed out and pulled the great door to behind him, with a loud crash.

      The wind blew bitingly up the close: the snow fell thickly around. Through the great fan light over the door shone the red and flickering glow of the conflagration within. The divine fell on his knees on the powdered pavement and thanked God for his escape.

      We are glad that we can supplement the above (drawn from the rev. gentleman’s own account) with the following particulars from contemporaneous documents.

      We find (in Dr Zophar Cant’s ‘Special Judgements and Providences’) that, that vessel of God, Ephraim Martext, did linger long in a sore fever, raving much and saying that he was plague stricken in his delerium.

      Farther, we read in a personal narrative, that the mansion of the Ravens woods was reduced on that night to four black and tottering walls. So the mystery of the Plague Cellar was never solved.

       Thrawn Janet

      THE REVEREND Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonition, on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as if his eye pierced through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves against the season of the Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon on 1st Peter, v. and 8th, ‘The devil as a roaring lion,’ on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hill-tops rising toward the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr Soulis’s ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence; СКАЧАТЬ