The Screaming Skull (Horror Collection). Francis Marion Crawford

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      "It is time, child," said Nurse Macdonald. "I must go to him, for it is the end."

      She rose slowly, leaning her withered hands upon the arms of the chair, and the girl brought her a woollen gown and a great mantle, and her crutch-stick, and made her ready. But very often the girl looked at the window and was unjointed with fear, and often Nurse Macdonald shook her head and said words which the maid could not understand.

      "It was like the face of Miss Evelyn," said the girl at last, trembling.

      But the ancient woman looked up sharply and angrily, and her queer blue eyes glared. She held herself by the arm of the great chair with her left hand, and lifted up her crutch-stick to strike the maid with all her might. But she did not.

      "You are a good girl," she said, "but you are a fool. Pray for wit, child, pray for wit—or else find service in another house than Ockram Hall. Bring the lamp and help me under my left arm."

      The crutch-stick clacked on the wooden floor, and the low heels of the woman's slippers clappered after her in slow triplets, as Nurse Macdonald got toward the door. And down the stairs each step she took was a labour in itself, and by the clacking noise the waking servants knew that she was coming, very long before they saw her.

      No one was sleeping now, and there were lights, and whisperings, and pale faces in the corridors near Sir Hugh's bedroom, and now some one went in, and now some one came out, but every one made way for Nurse Macdonald, who had nursed Sir Hugh's father more than eighty years ago.

      The light was soft and clear in the room. There stood Gabriel Ockram by his father's bedside, and there knelt Evelyn Warburton, her hair lying like a golden shadow down her shoulders, and her hands clasped nervously together. And opposite Gabriel, a nurse was trying to make Sir Hugh drink. But he would not, and though his lips were parted, his teeth were set. He was very, very thin and yellow now, and his eyes caught the light sideways and were as yellow coals.

      "Do not torment him," said Nurse Macdonald to the woman who held the cup. "Let me speak to him, for his hour is come."

      "Let her speak to him," said Gabriel in a dull voice.

      So the ancient woman leaned to the pillow and laid the feather-weight of her withered hand, that was like a brown moth, upon Sir Hugh's yellow fingers, and she spoke to him earnestly, while only Gabriel and Evelyn were left in the room to hear.

      "Hugh Ockram," she said, "this is the end of your life; and as I saw you born, and saw your father born before you, I am come to see you die. Hugh Ockram, will you tell me the truth?"

      The dying man recognised the little faraway voice he had known all his life, and he very slowly turned his yellow face to Nurse Macdonald; but he said nothing. Then she spoke again.

      "Hugh Ockram, you will never see the daylight again. Will you tell the truth?"

      His toad-like eyes were not yet dull. They fastened themselves on her face.

      "What do you want of me?" he asked, and each word struck hollow upon the last. "I have no secrets. I have lived a good life."

      Nurse Macdonald laughed—a tiny, cracked laugh, that made her old head bob and tremble a little, as if her neck were on a steel spring. But Sir Hugh's eyes grew red, and his pale lips began to twist.

      "Let me die in peace," he said slowly.

      But Nurse Macdonald shook her head, and her brown, moth-like hand left his and fluttered to his forehead.

      "By the mother that bore you and died of grief for the sins you did, tell me the truth!"

      Sir Hugh's lips tightened on his discoloured teeth.

      "Not on earth," he answered slowly.

      "By the wife who bore your son and died heartbroken, tell me the truth!"

      "Neither to you in life, nor to her in eternal death."

      His lips writhed, as if the words were coals between them, and a great drop of sweat rolled across the parchment of his forehead. Gabriel Ockram bit his hand as he watched his father die. But Nurse Macdonald spoke a third time.

      "By the woman whom you betrayed, and who waits for you this night, Hugh Ockram, tell me the truth!"

      "It is too late. Let me die in peace."

      The writhing lips began to smile across the set yellow teeth, and the toad eyes glowed like evil jewels in his head.

      "There is time," said the ancient woman. "Tell me the name of Evelyn Warburton's father. Then I will let you die in peace."

      Evelyn started back, kneeling as she was, and stared at Nurse Macdonald, and then at her uncle.

      "The name of Evelyn's father?" he repeated slowly, while the awful smile spread upon his dying face.

      The light was growing strangely dim in the great room. As Evelyn looked, Nurse Macdonald's crooked shadow on the wall grew gigantic. Sir Hugh's breath came thick, rattling in his throat, as death crept in like a snake and choked it back. Evelyn prayed aloud, high and clear.

      Then something rapped at the window, and she felt her hair rise upon her head in a cool breeze, as she looked around in spite of herself. And when she saw her own white face looking in at the window, and her own eyes staring at her through the glass, wide and fearful, and her own hair streaming against the pane, and her own lips dashed with blood, she rose slowly from the floor and stood rigid for one moment, till she screamed once and fell straight back into Gabriel's arms. But the shriek that answered hers was the fear-shriek of the tormented corpse, out of which the soul cannot pass for shame of deadly sins, though the devils fight in it with corruption, each for their due share.

      Sir Hugh Ockram sat upright in his deathbed, and saw and cried aloud:

      "Evelyn!" His harsh voice broke and rattled in his chest as he sank down. But still Nurse Macdonald tortured him, for there was a little life left in him still.

      "You have seen the mother as she waits for you, Hugh Ockram. Who was this girl Evelyn's father? What was his name?"

      For the last time the dreadful smile came upon the twisted lips, very slowly, very surely now, and the toad eyes glared red, and the parchment face glowed a little in the flickering light. For the last time words came.

      "They know it in hell."

      Then the glowing eyes went out quickly, the yellow face turned waxen pale, and a great shiver ran through the thin body as Hugh Ockram died.

      But in death he still smiled, for he knew his secret and kept it still, on the other side, and he would take it with him, to lie with him for ever in the north vault of the chapel where the Ockrams lie uncoffined in their shrouds—all but one. Though he was dead, he smiled, for he had kept his treasure of evil truth to the end, and there was none left to tell the name he had spoken, but there was all the evil he had not undone left to bear fruit.

      As they watched—Nurse Macdonald and Gabriel, who held Evelyn still unconscious in his arms while he looked at the father—they felt the dead smile crawling along their own lips—the ancient crone and the youth with the angel's face. Then they shivered a little, and both looked at Evelyn as she lay with her head on his shoulder, and, though she was very beautiful, the same СКАЧАТЬ