Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Robert Louis Stevenson
Читать онлайн книгу.
God of Isaac and of Israel guide and assist you! I myself will wait on the landing above to catch what you may say, if you are too suddenly smitten. I suppose I also must die; but essay, my son, to close the door when you come out, lest when I pass, I should be rendered incapable of spreading the secret.’ The minister’s heavy face was idealized by his noble determination.
Both rose without a word. Ravenswood went first, his eyes scintillating, his cheeks glowing with a hectic flush. As they passed down the stair, Ravenswood said something so incoherent, that Martext supposed he had not heard distinctly: he was too much excited to think of asking into it’s (sic.) meaning.
At last the minister paused on the landing, whence he could see distinctly a portion of wainscot where some boards less time-stained than the others led him to believe that the cellar door existed.
Ravenswood continued his descent to a corner of the stair where a large axe was propped against a wall. Three vigorous strokes on the crunching boards, burst in the patched-up entrance. Martext was so pleased that he could not see into the space that lay beyond: he heard Ravenswood give a strange, wild, falsetto laugh which rang hideously through the echoing stair: the sound smote him to the heart: he felt very cold. Ravenswood descended the stair, picked up the lantern, and plunged into the mysterious passage.
For a space all was terribly still. The light, which fell across the stair from the ragged entrance, grew fainter and fainter. Martext, in an agony of fear and excitement, craned forward over the shaking balustrade, the dim light falling with strange effect, on his wrought and eager visage.
Suddenly, that hateful laugh burst forth again louder, wilder, higher, more utterly appalling than before. ‘Ha-ah!’ he yelled. ‘See! the plague-spots! for the Church! Glory!’ And again, the demon laugh echoed strangely out into the stair.
Next instant, a bright light arose in the passage: something highly inflamable, had been lit. The figure of Ravenswood appeared at the entrance, standing out against the light behind. The wild words, the fiendish laugh, the sudden conflagration had all terrified the divine; yet he did not forget his duty to his church.
‘Speak,’ he articulated. ‘Speak! What have you heard? ’
‘Ha! Ha! I know you!’ replied the madman. ‘You are Sharpe – Sharpe the apostate! Do you think I will tell you! Glory! Glory! Ah! apostate, murderer! Where is the pardon! Five men died yesterday! Give me the King’s letter of mercy! Give it me!’
And he rushed up towards the other. Martext was rooted to the ground with horror: with eyes protruded, he stood waiting for the madman. Then with a long drawn breath, he turned and fled. Up the stair they ran, the dust rising in clouds, the empty vault of the stair echoing to the maniac’s howls. Master Ephraim plunged desperately into an open door: the room was pitch dark; he flattened himself against the wall. His pursuer almost touched him, as he passed, feeling in every corner. The moment that the way was clear, Martext dashed forth and ran down the stairs again. He did not know what he was doing: his only object was to escape from the touch of his miserable nephew.
The combustibles in the Plague Cellar had been exceedingly dry surely; for, when Master Ephraim reached that part of the stair in his downward flight, great tongues of flame leapt across the whole path, and curled round the balustrade; while the whole entrance was obscured by pitchy smoke. At no other time would the minister have dared to pass such a barrier. But now, goaded by despair, he plunged through the fire, leapt the remainder of the steps, and fell, half dead with terror, against the massive door.
Recovering his presence of mind and remembering that every minute he might be overtaken and seized, he strove to withdraw the bolt of the lock. What seemed a century elapsed. At last the lock opened. He looked back: Ravenswood, terrified by the flames, was halting irresolutely on the farther side. With a cry of wild joy, Martext rushed out and pulled the great door to behind him, with a loud crash.
The wind blew bitingly up the close: the snow fell thickly around. Through the great fan light over the door shone the red and flickering glow of the conflagration within. The divine fell on his knees on the powdered pavement and thanked God for his escape.
We are glad that we can supplement the above (drawn from the rev. gentleman’s own account) with the following particulars from contemporaneous documents.
We find (in Dr Zophar Cant’s ‘Special Judgements and Providences’) that, that vessel of God, Ephraim Martext, did linger long in a sore fever, raving much and saying that he was plague stricken in his delerium.
Farther, we read in a personal narrative, that the mansion of the Ravens woods was reduced on that night to four black and tottering walls. So the mystery of the Plague Cellar was never solved.
THE REVEREND Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonition, on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as if his eye pierced through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves against the season of the Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon on 1st Peter, v. and 8th, ‘The devil as a roaring lion,’ on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hill-tops rising toward the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr Soulis’s ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing late by that uncanny neighbourhood. There was one spot, to be more particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood between the highroad and the water of Dule, with a gable to each; its back was towards the kirktown of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front of it, a bare garden, hedged with thorn, occupied that land between the river and the road. The house was two stories high, with two large rooms on each. It opened not directly on the garden, but on a causewayed path, or passage, giving on the road on the one hand, and closed on the other by the tall willows and elders that bordered on the stream. And it was this strip of causeway that enjoyed among the young parishioners of Balweary so infamous a reputation. The minister walked there often after dark, sometimes groaning aloud in the instancy of his unspoken prayers; and when he was from home, and the manse door was locked, the more daring schoolboys ventured, with beating hearts, to ‘follow my leader’ across that legendary spot.
This atmosphere of terror, surrounding as it did, a man of God of spotless character and orthodoxy, was a common cause of wonder and subject of inquiry among the few strangers who were led by chance or business to that unknown, outlying country. But many even of the people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had marked the first year of Mr Soulis’s ministrations; and among those who were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler, and recount the cause of the minister’s strange looks and solitary life.
Fifty years syne, when Mr Soulis cam ‘first into Ba’weary, he was still a young man – a callant, the folk said – fu’ o’ book-learnin’ an’ grand at the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi’ nae leevin’ experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi’ his gifts and his gab; but auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a self-deceiver, and the parish that was like to be sae ill-supplied. It was before the days o’ the moderates – weary fa’ them; but ill things are like guid