"Oscar Wilde. The Canterville Ghost" - читать интересную книгу автора

knees severely, and bruising the knuckles of his right hand.
For some days after this he was extremely ill, and hardly stirred out
of his room at all, except to keep the blood-stain in proper repair.
However, by taking great care of himself, he recovered, and relsoved to make
a third attempt to frighten the United States Minister and his family. He
selected Friday, the 17th of August, for his appearance, and
spent most of that day in looking over his wardrobe, ultimately deciding in
favor of a large slouched hat with a red feather, a winding-sheet frilled at
the wrists and neck, and a rasty dagger. Towards evening a violent storm of
rain came on, and the wind was so high that all the windows and doors in the
old house shook and rattled. In fact, it was just such weather as he loved.
His plan of action was this. He was to make his way quietly to Washington
Otis's room, gibber at him from the foot of the bed, and stab himself three
times in the throat to the sound of slow music. He bore Washington a special
grudge, being quite aware that it was he who was in the habit of removing
the famous Canterville blood-stain, by means of Pinkerton's Paragon
Detergent. Having reduced the reckless and foolhardy youth to a condition of
abject terror, he was then to proceed to the room occupied by the United
States Minister and his wife, and there to place a clammy hand on Mrs. Otis
forehead, while he hissed into her trembling husband's ear the awful secrets
of the charnel-house. With regard to little Virginia, he had not quite made
up his mind. She had never insulted him in any way, and was pretty and
gentle. A few hollow groans from the wardrobe, he thought, would be more
that sufficient, or, if that failed to wake her, he might grabble at the
counterpane with palsy-twitching fingers. As for the twins, he was quite
determined to teach them a lesson. The first thing to be done was, of
course, to sit upon their chests, so as to produce the stifling sensation of
nightmare. Then, as their beds were quite close to each other, to stand
between them in the form of a green, icy-cold corpse, till they became
paralysed with fear, and finally, to throw off the winding-sheet, and crawl
round the room, with white, bleached bones and one rolling eyeball, in the
character of "Dumb Daniel, or the Suicide's Skeleton", a role in
which he had on more than one occasion produced a great effect, and which he
considered quite equal to his famous part of "Martin the Maniac, or the
Masked Mystery."
At half-past ten he heard the family going to bed. For some more time
he was disturbed by wild shrieks of laughter from the twins, who, with the
light-hearted gaiety of schoolboys, were evidently amusing themselves before
they retired to rest, but at a quarter past eleven all was still, and, as
midnight sounded, he sailed forth. The owl beat against the window panes,
the raven croaked from the old yew-tree, and the wind wandered moaning round
the house like a lost soul; but the Otis family slept unconscious of their
doom, and high above the rain and storm he could hear the steady snoring of
the Minister for the United States. He stepped stealthy out of the
wainscoting, with an evil smile on his cruel, wrinkled mouth, and the moon
hid her face in a cloud as he stole past the great oriel window, where his
own arms and those of his murdered wife were blazoned in azure and gold. On
and on he glided, like an evil shadow, the very darkness seeming to loathe
him as he passed. Once he thought he heard something call, and stopped; but
it was only the baying of a dog from the Red Farm, and he went on, muttering