The Black Reaper: Tales of Terror by Bernard Capes. Bernard Capes

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ as ’d set ’em up like boggarts mended wi’ new broomsticks.’

      ‘Ho-haw!’ broke in a hurdle-maker in a corner; and then, regretting the publicity of his merriment, put his fingers bashfully to his stubble lips.

      ‘Now,’ said the banjo, ‘it’s of a pertikler night and a pertikler skinful that I’m a-going to tell you; and that night fell dark, and that skinful were took a hundred years ago this December, as I’m a Jack-pudden!’

      He paused for a moment for effect, before he went on:

      ‘They were down in the sou’-west country, which they little knew; and were anighing Winchester city, or should ’a’ been. But they got muzzed on the ungodly downs, and before they guessed, they was off the track. My good hat! there they was, as lost in the snow as three nut-shells a-sinkin’ into a hasty pudden. Well, they wandered round; pretty confident at first, but getting madder and madder as every sense of their bearings slipped from them. And the bitter cold took their vitals, so they saw nothing but a great winding sheet stretched abroad for to wrap their dead carcasses in.

      ‘At last my grandfather he stopt and pulled hisself together with an awful face, and says he: “We’re Christmas pie for the carrying-on crows if we don’t prove ourselves human. Let’s fetch our pipes and blow our trouble into ’em.” So they stood together, like as if they were before a house, and they played “Kate of Aberdare” mighty dismal and flat, for their fingers froze to the keys.

      ‘Now, I tell you, they hadn’t climbed over the first stave, when there come a skirl of wind and spindrift of snow as almost took them off their feet; and, on the going down of it, Jem Sloke, as played the hautboy, dropped the reed from his mouth, and called out, “Sakes alive! if we fools ain’t been standin’ outside a gentleman’s gate all the time, and not knowin’ it!”

      ‘You might ’a’ knocked the three of ’em down wi’ a barley straw, as they stared and stared, and then fell into a low, enjoyin’ laugh. For they was standin’ not six fut from a tall iron gate in a stone wall, and behind these was a great house showin’ out dim, with the winders all lighted up.

      ‘“Lord!” chuckled my grandfather, “to think o’ the tricks o’ this vagarious country! But, as we’re here, we’ll go on and give ’em a taste of our quality.”

      ‘They put new heart into the next movement, as you may guess; and they hadn’t fair started on it, when the door of the house swung open, and down the shaft of light that shot out as far as the gate there come a smiling young gal, with a tray of glasses in her hands.

      ‘Now she come to the bars; and she took and put a glass through, not sayin’ nothin’, but invitin’ someone to drink with a silent laugh.

      ‘Did anyone take that glass? Of course he did, you’ll be thinkin’; and you’ll be thinkin’ wrong. Not a man of the three moved. They was struck like as stone, and their lips was gone the colour of sloe berries. Not a man took the glass. For why? The moment the gal presented it, each saw the face of a thing lookin’ out of the winder over the porch, and the face was hidjus beyond words, and the shadder of it, with the light behind, stretched out and reached to the gal, and made her hidjus, too.

      ‘At last my grandfather give a groan and put out his hand; and, as he did it, the face went, and the gal was beautiful to see agen.

      ‘“Death and the devil!” said he. “It’s one or both, either way; and I prefer ’em hot to cold!”

      ‘He drank off half the glass, smacked his lips, and stood staring a moment.

      ‘“Dear, dear!” said the gal, in a voice like falling water, “you’ve drunk blood, sir!”

      ‘My grandfather gave a yell, slapped the rest of the liquor in the faces of his friends, and threw the cup agen the bars. It broke with a noise like thunder, and at that he up’d with his hands and fell full length into the snow.’

      There was a pause. The little man by the door was twisting nervously in his chair.

      ‘He came to – of course, he came to?’ said he at length.

      ‘He come to,’ said the banjo solemnly, ‘in the bitter break of dawn; that is, he come to as much of hisself as he ever was after. He give a squiggle and lifted his head; and there was he and his friends a-lyin’ on the snow of the high downs.’

      ‘And the house and the gal?’

      ‘Narry a sign of either, sir, but just the sky and the white stretch; and one other thing.’

      ‘And what was that?’

      ‘A stain of red sunk in where the cup had spilt.’

      There was a second pause, and the banjo blew into the bowl of his pipe.

      ‘They cleared out of that neighbourhood double quick, you’ll bet,’ said he. ‘But my grandfather was never the same man agen. His face took purple, while his friends’ only remained splashed with red, same as birth marks; and, I tell you, if ever he ventur’d upon “Kate of Aberdare”, his cheeks swelled up to the reed of his clarinet, like as a blue plum on a stalk. And forty years after, he died of what they call solution of blood to the brain.’

      ‘And you can’t have better proof than that,’ said the little man.

      ‘That’s what I say,’ said the banjo. ‘Next player, gentlemen, please.’

       THE THING IN THE FOREST

      Into the snow-locked forests of Upper Hungary steal wolves in winter; but there is a footfall worse than theirs to knock upon the heart of the lonely traveller.

      One December evening Elspet, the young, newly wedded wife of the woodman Stefan, came hurrying over the lower slopes of the White Mountains from the town where she had been all day marketing. She carried a basket with provisions on her arm; her plump cheeks were like a couple of cold apples; her breath spoke short, but more from nervousness than exhaustion. It was nearing dusk, and she was glad to see the little lonely church in the hollow below, the hub, as it were, of many radiating paths through the trees, one of which was the road to her own warm cottage yet a half-mile away.

      She paused a moment at the foot of the slope, undecided about entering the little chill, silent building and making her plea for protection to the great battered stone image of Our Lady of Succour which stood within by the confessional box; but the stillness and the growing darkness decided her, and she went on. A spark of fire glowing through the presbytery window seemed to repel rather than attract her, and she was glad when the convolutions of the path hid it from her sight. Being new to the district, she had seen very little of Father Ruhl as yet, and somehow the penetrating knowledge and burning eyes of the pastor made her feel uncomfortable.

      The soft drift, the lane of tall, motionless pines, stretched on in a quiet like death. Somewhere the sun, like a dead fire, had fallen into opalescent embers faintly luminous: they were enough only to touch the shadows with a ghastlier pallor. It was so still that the light crunch in the snow of the girl’s own footfalls trod on her heart like a desecration.

      Suddenly there was something near her that had not been before. It had come like a shadow, without more sound or warning. It was here – there – behind her. She turned, СКАЧАТЬ