Дом с привидениями. Уровень 2 / A Haunted House

Then the sun moved. Miss Antonia looked up as the light strengthened. Her forefathers—the Rashleighs—owned vast lands, so they said. Over there. Up the Amazons. Freebooter. Voyagers. Captives. Maidens. Miss Antonia grinned. The finger of the sun rested on a silver frame. Then on a photograph; on an egg-shaped baldish head; on a lip; and the name “Edward”.

“The King,” Miss Antonia muttered, “had the Blue Room.”

They were driving the pheasants out in the King’s Ride, across the noses of the guns.

The birds spurted up from the underwood like heavy rockets. Reddish purple rockets. Then they faded. They dispersed gently.

In the road, a cart stood. Soft warm bodies, with limp claws, and still lustrous eyes. The birds seemed alive. They looked relaxed and comfortable. Then the Squire cursed and raised his gun.

Miss Antonia stitched on. Now and then a tongue of flame reached the grey log. Miss Antonia looked up for a moment, as a dog stares at a flame. Then the flame sank. She stitched again.

Then, silently, the enormously high door opened. Two lean men came in. They drew a table over the hole in the carpet. They went out. They came in. They laid a cloth upon the table. They went out. They came in. They brought a green baize basket of knives and forks; and glasses. They brought sugar casters; and salt cellars; and bread. They brought a silver vase with three chrysanthemums in it. Miss Antonia stitched on.

Again the door opened. A little dog trotted in, a spaniel.

It paused. And then old Miss Rashleigh entered. A white shawl clouded her baldness. She hobbled. She crossed the room. She hunched herself in the high-backed chair by the fireside. Miss Antonia stitched on.

“They are shooting,” she said at last.

Old Miss Rashleigh nodded. She gripped her stick. They were waiting.

The shooters moved from the King’s Ride to the Home Woods. They stood in the field outside. Now and then a twig snapped. But above the mist and the smoke was an island of blue—faint blue, pure blue—alone in the sky.

And in the innocent air, a bell gamboled. Then it faded. Then again up shot the rockets, the reddish purple pheasants. Up and up they went. Again the guns barked. The smoke balls formed; loosened, dispersed. And the busy little dogs ran over the fields. The men bunched warm damp bodies together.

“There!” grunted Milly Masters, the house-keeper.

She was stitching, too, in the small dark room.