Дом с привидениями. Уровень 2 / A Haunted House

”

The knives and forks sink slowly. They get down. Bob and Barbara. But this we’ll skip. Ornaments, curtains, trefoil china plate, yellow oblongs of cheese, white squares of biscuit. Skip, oh, but wait! One of those shivers. Bob stares at her. He has a spoon in mouth.

“Eat your pudding, Bob”; but Hilda disapproves.

Skip, skip, till we reach the upper floor. We reach stairs; linoleum. Oh, yes! little bedroom. One can see the roofs of Eastbourne. One can see zigzagging roofs like the spines of caterpillars.

This way, that way, red and yellow.

Now, Minnie, the door’s shut. Hilda heavily descends to the basement. You unstrap the straps of your basket. You lay on the bed a meagre nightgown. The looking-glass—no, you avoid the looking-glass. Some methodical disposition of hat-pins. Perhaps the shell box? You shake it. It’s the pearl, that’s all. And then the sniff and the sigh. Three o’clock on a December afternoon. One light in the skylight of a drapery emporium. Another high in a servant’s bedroom.

Nothing to look at[3 - Nothing to look at – Не на что смотреть.].

A moment’s blankness. What are you thinking? She’s asleep. What does she think about? At three o’clock in the afternoon? Health, money, hills, her God? Yes, Minnie Marsh is sitting on the edge of the chair. Minnie Marsh is looking over the roofs of Eastbourne. Minnie Marsh prays to God. That’s all very well. She may rub the pane too, as though to see God better. But what God does she see? Who’s the God of Minnie Marsh? The God of the back streets of Eastbourne? The God of three o’clock in the afternoon? I, too, see roofs.

I see sky. But, oh, dear—to see Gods! More like President Kruger than Prince Albert. I see him on a chair. I see him in a black frock-coat, not so high. I can manage a cloud or two for him. And then his hand holds a rod, a truncheon. Black, thick, thorned, Minnie’s God! Did he send the itch and the patch and the twitch? Is that why she prays? She rubs the stain of sin on the window. Oh, she committed some crime!

The woods flit and fly. In summer there are bluebells. When spring comes, primroses. A parting, was it, twenty years ago? Broken vows? Not Minnie’s! She was faithful. How she nursed her mother! All her savings on the tombstone—wreaths under glass—daffodils in jars. But the crime… They may say she kept her sorrow. She suppressed her secret—her sex—the scientific people.