Читать книгу Midnight House - Ethel Lina White - Страница 15

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She shuddered as she thought of it—a long walled passage with two bends, dimly lit by an occasional lamp. It had an echo, so after she walked a few yards, she heard footsteps coming to meet her from the other end... And recently she had seen a photograph of it in the local paper, with a cross marked upon its pavement...

Feeling desperate, she gripped the boy by the collar and tried to drag him on, but he wriggled free, as though he were oiled.

"All right," she cried—goaded to the ultimate insult—"we are going home without you—you Untouchable."

Instantly Barney changed from a mysterious menace to a normal small boy. He slipped his cold hand within hers and walked beside her.

"I'm not really that, am I?" he asked in an awed voice. "You are touching me, aren't you, darling?"

Elizabeth expected opposition when she steered the children down the lane leading to Monk Street and away from the shops. She was vaguely disconcerted when they asked no questions. It seemed to suggest that they had been pushing her into a position which suited their secret plans.

This hint of alliance supplied a furtive element which was a disagreeable accompaniment to a twilight walk through the slums. In the thickening darkness, the Old Town appeared sinister and hideously ancient with its decrepit hair-powder mill, its cottage-gardens—sodden with dead plants—and its dark waters stealing along paved ditches. The gutters were choked with dead leaves and over all hung a heavy smell of garbage and decay.

Visitors to Rivermead were always attracted to the picturesque ruins of this quarter. Artists painted its hump-backed inns and pig-sties whose rose-red tiled roofs were ridged like a choppy sea. It had charmed Elizabeth too during the sunny days of the Indian summer which had shortened the autumn. But that evening as she passed a disused factory it only stirred unhappy memories of prematurely-old children—doomed to slavery—hammering the heads of pins upon their points.

The morbid streak which was the legacy of her unnatural childhood made her think of small dead hands, stiff as frozen petals, as she clasped Barney's fingers tighter. In his relief at finding himself still within the sphere of contact, he returned her squeeze. Feeling pledged to his protection, her courage returned as they reached Monk Street.

It was a dingy region, given up to offices and apartment-houses with blistered paint and wire blinds. The road was cobbled and there were neither pavements nor lamp-posts. It was lit by naked gas-jets enclosed in hanging iron-lanterns. On one side of the street arose the hoary pile of St. John's, magnified by the mist. This was the oldest church in the district, and the clock in its tower had stopped at eight-twenty-nine, on the second of April, 1789.

From force of habit, Elizabeth strained her eyes to see the time. As they drew nearer to Maundy Passage, her imagination began to flare up again. She felt that their footsteps must attract the attention of the residents and that every blind had its hole for a spying eye. It was an inquisitive street—a hostile street—a chilly street—where their breath issued in spurts of vapour on the raw air.

"Look at me," cried Phil. "I'm smoking."

It was second-nature for Barney to try and steal her thunder.

"I'm smoking like a steam-injun," he bragged, blowing out his cheeks.

He soon grew tired of puffing and stopped to introduce some light relief into the competition.

"Phil, can you see the graves?" he asked, pointing to the churchyard across the narrow road.

In the faint light, the slanting ivy-draped tombstones were barely visible through beaded iron railings, while mist—rising from the damp ground—shrouded the neglected mounds.

Barney ghoulishly explained the vapour to his sister.

"The dead people are breathing. That's their breath coming up."

"You're frightening me," protested Phil mechanically.

"Silly. Dead people are just bones. Bones can't hurt you. You give bones to dogs. I know, 'cos I've seen dead people. They didn't frighten me."

He made the statement casually, so that if it had not been so monstrously fantastic, Elizabeth might have believed that he was speaking the truth... But before them was the open mouth of Maundy Passage. As she was wondering how to make them run through it, without arousing their suspicions, she overheard Barney's whisper to his sister.

"I told you I'd make her take us down Murder Lane."