Out of the Dark: Tales of Terror by Robert W. Chambers. Robert W. ChambersЧитать онлайн книгу.
all?’
‘How should I know?’ I smiled.
Tessie smiled in reply.
‘You were in it,’ she said, ‘so perhaps you might know something about it.’
‘Tessie! Tessie!’ I protested, ‘don’t you dare flatter by saying that you dream about me!’
‘But I did,’ she insisted. ‘Shall I tell you about it?’
‘Go ahead,’ I replied, lighting a cigarette.
Tessie leaned back on the open window-sill and began very seriously.
‘One night last winter I was lying in bed thinking about nothing at all in particular. I had been posing for you and I was tired out, yet it seemed impossible for me to sleep. I heard the bells in the city ring, ten, eleven, and midnight. I must have fallen asleep about midnight because I don’t remember hearing the bells after that. It seemed to me that I had scarcely closed my eyes when I dreamed that something impelled me to go to the window. I rose, and raising the sash leaned out. Twenty-fifth Street was deserted as far as I could see. I began to be afraid; everything outside seemed so – so black and uncomfortable. Then the sound of wheels in the distance came to my ears, and it seemed to me as though that was what I must wait for. Very slowly the wheels approached, and, finally, I could make out a vehicle moving along the street. It came nearer and nearer, and when it passed beneath my window I saw it was a hearse. Then, as I trembled with fear, the driver turned and looked straight at me. When I awoke I was standing by the open window shivering with cold, but the black-plumed hearse and the driver were gone. I dreamed this dream again in March last, and again awoke beside the open window. Last night the dream came again. You remember how it was raining; when I awoke, standing at the open window, my night-dress was soaked.’
‘But where did I come into the dream?’ I asked.
‘You – you were in the coffin; but you were not dead.’
‘In the coffin?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did you know? Could you see me?’
‘No; I only knew you were there.’
‘Had you been eating Welsh rarebits, or lobster salad?’ I began laughing, but the girl interrupted me with a frightened cry.
‘Hello! What’s up?’ I said, as she shrank into the embrasure by the window.
‘The – the man below in the churchyard; he drove the hearse.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said, but Tessie’s eyes were wide with terror. I went to the window and looked out. The man was gone. ‘Come, Tessie,’ I urged, ‘don’t be foolish. You have posed too long; you are nervous.’
‘Do you think I could forget that face?’ she murmured. ‘Three times I saw the hearse pass below my window, and every time the driver turned and looked up at me. Oh, his face was so white and – and soft! It looked dead – it looked as if it had been dead a long time.’
I induced the girl to sit down and swallow a glass of Marsala. Then I sat down beside her, and tried to give her some advice.
‘Look here, Tessie,’ I said, ‘you go to the country for a week or two, and you’ll have no more dreams about hearses. You pose all day, and when night comes your nerves are upset. You can’t keep this up. Then again, instead of going to bed when your day’s work is done, you run off to picnics at Sulzer’s Park, or go to the Eldorado or Coney Island, and when you come down here next morning you are fagged out. There was no real hearse. That was a soft-shell crab dream.’
She smiled faintly.
‘What about the man in the churchyard?’
‘Oh, he’s only an ordinary unhealthy, everyday creature.’
‘As true as my name is Tessie Rearden, I swear to you, Mr Scott, that the face of the man below in the churchyard is the face of the man who drove the hearse!’
‘What of it?’ I said. ‘It’s an honest trade.’
‘Then you think I did see the hearse?’
‘Oh, I said diplomatically, ‘if you really did, it might not be unlikely that the man below drove it. There is nothing in that.’
Tessie rose, unrolled her scented handkerchief and taking a bit of gum from a knot in the hem, placed it in her mouth. Then drawing on her gloves she offered me her hand, with a frank, ‘Good-night, Mr Scott,’ and walked out.
II
The next morning, Thomas, the bellboy, brought me the Herald and a bit of news. The church next door had been sold. I thanked Heaven for it, not that I, being a Catholic, had any repugnance for the congregation next door, but because my nerves were shattered by a blatant exhorter, whose every word echoed through the aisle of the church as if it had been my own rooms, and who insisted on his r’s with a nasal persistence which revolted my every instinct. Then, too, there was a fiend in human shape, an organist, who reeled off some of the grand old hymns with an interpretation of his own, and I longed for the blood of a creature who could play the ‘Doxology’ with an amendment of minor chords which one hears only in a quartet of very young undergraduates. I believe the minister was a good man, but when he bellowed: ‘And the Lorrrd said unto Moses, the Lorrrd is a man of war; the Lorrrd is my name. My wrath shall wax hot and I will kill you with my sworrrd!’ I wondered how many centuries of purgatory it would take to atone for such a sin.
‘Who bought the property?’ I asked Thomas.
‘Nobody that I knows, sir. They do say the gent wot owns this ’ere ’Amilton flats was lookin’ at it. ’E might be a bildin’ more studios.’
I walked to the window. The young man with the unhealthy face stood by the churchyard gate, and at the mere sight of him the same overwhelming repugnance took possession of me.
‘By the way, Thomas,’ I said, ‘who is that fellow down there?’
Thomas sniffed. ‘That there worm, sir? ’E’s night-watchman of the church, sir. ’E maikes me tired-a-sittin’ out all night on them steps and lookin’ at you insultin’ like. I’d a punched ’is ’ed, sir – beg pardon, sir—’
‘Go on, Thomas.’
‘One night a comin’ ’ome with ’Arry, the other English boy, I sees ’im a sittin’ there on them steps. We ’ad Molly and Jen with us, sir, the two girls on the tray service, an’ ’e looks so insultin’ at us that I up and sez: “Wat you looking hat, you fat slug?” – beg pardon, sir, but that’s ’ow I sez, sir. Then ’e don’t say nothin’ and I sez: “Come out and I’ll punch that puddin’ ’ed.” Then I hopens the gate and goes in, but ’e don’t say nothin’, only looks insultin’ like. Then I ’its ’im one, but, ugh! ’is ’ed was that cold and mushy it ud sicken you to touch ’im.’
‘What did he do then?’ I asked, curiously.
‘’Im? Nawthin’.’
‘And you, Thomas?’
The young fellow flushed with embarrassment and smiled uneasily.
‘Mr Scott, sir, I ain’t no coward an’ I can’t make it out at all why I run. I was in the 5th Lawncers, sir, bugler at Tel-el-Kebir, an’ was shot by the wells.’
‘You don’t mean to say you ran away?’
‘Yes, sir; I run.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s just what I want to know, sir. I grabbed Molly an’ run, an’ the rest was as frightened as I.’
‘But what were they frightened at?’
Thomas refused to