"bram stoker - dracula(2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

that I should suddenly awake, and find myself at home,
with the dawn struggling in through the windows, as I had
now and again felt in the morning after a day of overwork.
But my flesh answered the pinching test, and my eyes were not
to be deceived. I was indeed awake and among the Carpathians.
All I could do now was to be patient, and to wait the
coming of morning.

Just as I had come to this conclusion I heard a heavy step approaching behind
the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light.
Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts
drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse,
and the great door swung back.

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache,
and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour
about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which
the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long
quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door.
The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture,
saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!"
He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a
statue,as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone.
The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold,
he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand
grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect
which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold
as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man.
Again he said.

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave
something of the happiness you bring!" The strength of
the handshake was so much akin to that which I had noticed
in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I
doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was speaking.
So to make sure, I said interrogatively, "Count Dracula?"

He bowed in a courtly was as he replied, "I am Dracula, and I bid
you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the night air
is chill, and you must need to eat and rest."As he was speaking,
he put the lamp on a bracket on the wall, and stepping out,
took my luggage. He had carried it in before I could forestall him.
I protested, but he insisted.

"Nay, sir, you are my guest. It is late, and my people are not available.
Let me see to your comfort myself."He insisted on carrying my traps
along the passage, and then up a great winding stair, and along
another great passage, on whose stone floor our steps rang heavily.