Лучшие мистические истории на английском / The Stories of Mystery

Any one less like my idea of a West Indian could not be imagined. She was a small, frail creature, well over forty, I should say, with a pale, peaky face, and hair of a very light shade of chestnut. Her presence was insignificant and her manner retiring. In any group of ten women she would have been the last whom one would have picked out. Her eyes were perhaps her most remarkable, and also, I am compelled to say, her least pleasant, feature. They were gray in color, – gray with a shade of green, – and their expression struck me as being decidedly furtive. I wonder if furtive is the word, or should I have said fierce? On second thoughts, feline would have expressed it better. A crutch leaning against the wall told me what was painfully evident when she rose: that one of her legs was crippled.

So I was introduced to Miss Penclosa, and it did not escape me that as my name was mentioned she glanced across at Agatha. Wilson had evidently been talking. And presently, no doubt, thought I, she will inform me by occult means that I am engaged to a young lady with wheat-ears in her hair. I wondered how much more Wilson had been telling her about me.

‘Professor Gilroy is a terrible sceptic,’ said he; ‘I hope, Miss Penclosa, that you will be able to convert him.’

She looked keenly up at me.

‘Professor Gilroy is quite right to be sceptical if he has not seen any thing convincing,’ said she. ‘I should have thought,’ she added, ‘that you would yourself have been an excellent subject.’

‘For what, may I ask?’ said I.

‘Well, for mesmerism, for example.’

‘My experience has been that mesmerists go for their subjects to those who are mentally unsound. All their results are vitiated, as it seems to me, by the fact that they are dealing with abnormal organisms.’

‘Which of these ladies would you say possessed a normal organism?’ she asked. ‘I should like you to select the one who seems to you to have the best balanced mind. Should we say the girl in pink and white? – Miss Agatha Marden, I think the name is.’

‘Yes, I should attach weight to any results from her.’

‘I have never tried how far she is impressionable. Of course some people respond much more rapidly than others. May I ask how far your scepticism extends? I suppose that you admit the mesmeric sleep and the power of suggestion.’

‘I admit nothing, Miss Penclosa.’

‘Dear me, I thought science had got further than that. Of course I know nothing about the scientific side of it. I only know what I can do. You see the girl in red, for example, over near the Japanese jar. I shall will that she come across to us.’

She bent forward as she spoke and dropped her fan upon the floor. The girl whisked round and came straight toward us, with an enquiring look upon her face, as if some one had called her.

‘What do you think of that, Gilroy?’ cried Wilson, in a kind of ecstasy.

I did not dare to tell him what I thought of it. To me it was the most barefaced, shameless piece of imposture that I had ever witnessed. The collusion and the signal had really been too obvious.

‘Professor Gilroy is not satisfied,’ said she, glancing up at me with her strange little eyes. ‘My poor fan is to get the credit of that experiment. Well, we must try something else. Miss Marden, would you have any objection to my putting you off?’

‘Oh, I should love it!’ cried Agatha.

By this time all the company had gathered round us in a circle, the shirt-fronted men, and the white-throated women, some awed, some critical, as though it were something between a religious ceremony and a conjurer’s entertainment. A red velvet arm-chair had been pushed into the centre, and Agatha lay back in it, a little flushed and trembling slightly from excitement. I could see it from the vibration of the wheat-ears. Miss Penclosa rose from her seat and stood over her, leaning upon her crutch.

And there was a change in the woman. She no longer seemed small or insignificant. Twenty years were gone from her age. Her eyes were shining, a tinge of color had come into her sallow cheeks, her whole figure had expanded. So I have seen a dull-eyed, listless lad change in an instant into briskness and life when given a task of which he felt himself master. She looked down at Agatha with an expression which I resented from the bottom of my soul – the expression with which a Roman empress might have looked at her kneeling slave. Then with a quick, commanding gesture she tossed up her arms and swept them slowly down in front of her.

I was watching Agatha narrowly. During three passes she seemed to be simply amused. At the fourth I observed a slight glazing of her eyes, accompanied by some dilation of her pupils. At the sixth there was a momentary rigour. At the seventh her lids began to droop. At the tenth her eyes were closed, and her breathing was slower and fuller than usual. I tried as I watched to preserve my scientific calm, but a foolish, causeless agitation convulsed me. I trust that I hid it, but I felt as a child feels in the dark. I could not have believed that I was still open to such weakness.

‘She is in the trance,’ said Miss Penclosa.

‘She is sleeping!’ I cried.

‘Wake her, then!’

I pulled her by the arm and shouted in her ear. She might have been dead for all the impression that I could make. Her body was there on the velvet chair. Her organs were acting – her heart, her lungs. But her soul! It had slipped from beyond our ken. Whither had it gone? What power had dispossessed it? I was puzzled and disconcerted.

‘So much for the mesmeric sleep,’ said Miss Penclosa. ‘As regards suggestion, whatever I may suggest Miss Marden will infallibly do, whether it be now or after she has awakened from her trance. Do you demand proof of it?’

‘Certainly,’ said I.

‘You shall have it.’ I saw a smile pass over her face, as though an amusing thought had struck her. She stooped and whispered earnestly into her subject’s ear. Agatha, who had been so deaf to me, nodded her head as she listened.

‘Awake!’ cried Miss Penclosa, with a sharp tap of her crutch upon the floor. The eyes opened, the glazing cleared slowly away, and the soul looked out once more after its strange eclipse.

We went away early. Agatha was none the worse for her strange excursion, but I was nervous and unstrung, unable to listen to or answer the stream of comments which Wilson was pouring out for my benefit. As I bade her good-night Miss Penclosa slipped a piece of paper into my hand.

‘Pray forgive me,’ said she, ‘if I take means to overcome your scepticism. Open this note at ten o’clock to-morrow morning. It is a little private test.’

I can’t imagine what she means, but there is the note, and it shall be opened as she directs. My head is aching, and I have written enough for to-night. Tomorrow I dare say that what seems so inexplicable will take quite another complexion. I shall not surrender my convictions without a struggle.

March 25. I am amazed, confounded. It is clear that I must reconsider my opinion upon this matter. But first let me place on record what has occurred.

I had finished breakfast, and was looking over some diagrams with which my lecture is to be illustrated, when my housekeeper entered to tell me that Agatha was in my study and wished to see me immediately. I glanced at the clock and saw with sun rise that it was only half-past nine.

When I entered the room, she was standing on the hearth-rug facing me. Something in her pose chilled me and checked the words which were rising to my lips. Her veil was half down, but I could see that she was pale and that her expression was constrained.

‘Austin,’ she said, ‘I have come to tell you that our engagement is at an end.’

I staggered. I believe that I literally did stagger. I know that I found myself leaning against the bookcase for support.

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Примечания

1

Hon. James Lawlor – благородный (титул за определенные заслуги).

2

tapis – ковер (фр.).

3

mênage – домашнее хозяйство (фр.).

4

thought no small bones of herself – была о себе очень высокого мнения.

5

Barège shawl – шаль особой вязки из легкой шерсти.

6

labouring under a delusion – пребывая в заблуждении.

7

a subscription ball – бал по подписке, когда участники «подписывают» определенную сумму на благотворительность.

8

a clairvoyante – обладающий способностью предвидеть и/или проникать в суть предметов и явлений (фр.).

9

Lent – Великий пост.

10

Shrove Tuesday – Жирный вторник, последний день Масленицы.

11

was in Holy Orders – был священнослужителем.

12

Glastonbury chair – в XIX в. так назывался дубовый стул, подобный тому, что принадлежал аббату Гластонбери.

13

Jacobean (house) – архитектурный стиль времен правления Иакова I и Карла I (XVII в.) Характеризуется смешением стилей европейского Возрождения.

14

Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound. – Юность – это Галаад, где есть бальзам для каждой раны (Галаад – область на восточном берегу от реки Иордан, славилась особым целебным бальзамом).

15

potter’s field – место захоронения нищих или бездомных.

16

via dolorosa – Крестный путь.

17

Claude Bernard – Клод Бернар (1813–1878), французский медик, основоположник эндокринологии.

18

bona fides – латинский юридический термин, обозначающий «добросовестность», «честные средства/услуги».