II
“It doesn’t ring,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop, appearing at the door with theunexpectedness of a genie1.
I had already suspected that fact.
“They’ve mended it twice,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. “But it never lasts.
So I have to keep alert. In case it’s something important. It’s importantwith you, isn’t it?”
“It—well—yes, it is important—to me, I mean.”
“That’s what I meant, too…” She looked at me thoughtfully. “Yes, it’squite bad, I can see— Who do you want? The vicar?”
“I— I’m not sure—”
It had been the vicar I came to see—but now, unexpectedly, I was doubt-ful. I didn’t quite know why. But immediately Mrs. Dane Calthrop told me.
“My husband’s a very good man,” she said. “Besides being the vicar, Imean. And that makes things difficult sometimes. Good people, you see,don’t really understand evil.” She paused and then said with a kind ofbrisk efficiency, “I think it had better be me.”
A faint smile came to my lips. “Is evil your department?” I asked.
“Yes, it is. It’s important in a parish to know all about the various—well—sins that are going on.”
“Isn’t sin your husband’s province? His official business, so to speak.”
“The forgiveness of sins,” she corrected me. “He can give absolution. Ican’t. But I,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop with the utmost cheerfulness, “canget sin arranged and classified for him. And if one knows about it one canhelp to prevent its harming other people. One can’t help the people them-selves. I can’t, I mean. Only God can call to repentance2, you know—or per-haps you don’t know. A lot of people don’t nowadays.”
“I can’t compete with your expert knowledge,” I said, “but I would liketo prevent people being—harmed.”
She shot me a quick glance.
“It’s like that, is it? You’d better come in and we’ll be comfortable.”
The vicarage sitting room was big and shabby. It was much shaded by agargantuan Victorian shrubbery that no one seemed to have had the en-ergy to curb3. But the dimness was not gloomy for some peculiar4 reason. Itwas, on the contrary, restful. All the large shabby chairs bore the impressof resting bodies in them over the years. A fat clock on the chimneypieceticked with a heavy comfortable regularity5. Here there would always betime to talk, to say what you wanted to say, to relax from the caresbrought about by the bright day outside.
Here, I felt, round-eyed girls who had tearfully discovered themselves tobe prospective6 mothers, had confided7 their troubles to Mrs. Dane Calthropand received sound, if not always orthodox, advice; here angry relativeshad unburdened themselves of their resentment8 over their in-laws; heremothers had explained that their Bob was not a bad boy; just high-spirited,and that to send him away to an approved school was absurd. Husbandsand wives had disclosed marital9 difficulties.
And here was I, Mark Easterbrook, scholar, author, man of the world,confronting a grey- haired weather- beaten woman with fine eyes, pre-pared to lay my troubles in her lap. Why? I didn’t know. I only had thatodd surety that she was the right person.
“We’ve just had tea with Thyrza Grey,” I began.
Explaining things to Mrs. Dane Calthrop was never difficult. She leapedto meet you.
“Oh I see. It’s upset you? These three are a bit much to take, I agree. I’vewondered myself… So much boasting. As a rule, in my experience, thereally wicked don’t boast. They can keep quiet about their wickedness. It’sif your sins aren’t really bad that you want so much to talk about them.
Sin’s such a wretched, mean, ignoble10 little thing. It’s terribly necessary tomake it seem grand and important. Village witches are usually silly ill-natured old women who like frightening people and getting something fornothing that way. Terribly easy to do, of course. When Mrs. Brown’s hensdie all you have to do is nod your head and say darkly: ‘Ah, her Billyteased my Pussy11 last Tuesday week.’ Bella Webb might, be only a witch ofthat kind. But she might, she just might, be something more… Somethingthat’s lasted on from a very early age and which crops up now and then incountry places. It’s frightening when it does, because there’s real malevol-ence—not just a desire to impress. Sybil Stamfordis is one of the silliestwomen I’ve ever met—but she really is a medium—whatever a mediummay be. Thyrza—I don’t know… What did she say to you? It was some-thing that she said that’s upset you, I suppose?”
“You have great experience, Mrs. Dane Calthrop. Would you say, fromall you know and have heard, that a human being could be destroyedfrom a distance, without visible connection, by another human being?”
Mrs. Dane Calthrop’s eyes opened a little wider.
“When you say destroyed, you mean, I take it, killed? A plain physicalfact?”
“Yes.”
“I should say it was nonsense,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop robustly12.
“Ah!” I said, relieved.
“But of course I might be wrong,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. “My fathersaid that airships were nonsense, and my great-grandfather probably saidthat railway trains were nonsense. They were both quite right. At thattime they both were impossible. But they’re not impossible now. Whatdoes Thyrza do, activate13 a death ray or something? Or do they all threedraw pentagrams and wish?”
I smiled.
“You’re making things come into focus,” I said. “I must have let that wo-man hypnotise me.”
“Oh no,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. “You wouldn’t do that. You’re notreally the suggestible type. There must have been something else. Some-thing that happened first. Before all this.”
“You’re quite right.” I told her, then, as simply as I could with an eco-nomy of words, of the murder of Father Gorman, and of the casual men-tion in the nightclub of the Pale Horse. Then I took from my pocket the listof names I had copied from the paper Dr. Corrigan had shown me.
Mrs. Dane Calthrop looked down at it, frowning.
“I see,” she said. “And these people? What have they all in common?”
“We’re not sure. It might be blackmail—or dope—”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. “That’s not what’s worrying you.
What you really believe is—that they’re all dead?”
I gave a deep sigh.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I believe. But I don’t really know that that is so.
Three of them are dead. Minnie Hesketh-Dubois, Thomasina Tuckerton,Mary Delafontaine. All three died in their beds from natural causes.
Which is what Thyrza Grey claims would happen.”
“You mean she claims she made it happen?”
“No, no. She wasn’t speaking of any actual people. She was expoundingwhat she believes to be a scientific possibility.”
“Which appears on the face of it to be nonsense,” said Mrs. Dane Cal-throp thoughtfully.
“I know. I would just have been polite about it and laughed to myself, ifit hadn’t been for that curious mention of the Pale Horse.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop musingly14. “The Pale Horse. That’s sug-gestive.”
She was silent a moment. Then she raised her head.
“It’s bad,” she said. “It’s very bad. Whatever is behind it, it’s got to bestopped. But you know that.”
“Well yes… But what can one do?”
“That you’ll have to find out. But there’s no time to be lost.” Mrs. DaneCalthrop rose to her feet, a whirlwind of activity. “You must get down to it—at once.” She considered. “Haven’t you got some friend who could helpyou?”
I thought. Jim Corrigan? A busy man with little time, and already prob-ably doing all he could. David Ardingly—but would David believe a word?
Hermia? Yes, there was Hermia. A clear brain, admirable logic15. A tower ofstrength if she could be persuaded to become an ally. After all, she and I—I did not finish the sentence. Hermia was my steady— Hermia was theperson.
“You’ve thought of someone? Good.”
Mrs. Dane Calthrop was brisk and businesslike.
“I’ll keep an eye on the Three Witches. I still feel that they are—some-how—not really the answer. It’s like when the Stamfordis woman dishesout a lot of idiocy16 about Egyptian mysteries and prophecies from the Pyr-amid texts. All she says is plain balderdash, but there are Pyramids andtexts and temple mysteries. I can’t help feeling that Thyrza Grey has gothold of something, found out about it, or heard it talked about, and is us-ing it in a kind of wild hotchpotch to boost her own importance and con-trol of occult powers. People are so proud of wickedness. Odd, isn’t it, thatpeople who are good are never proud of it? That’s where Christian17 humil-ity comes in, I suppose. They don’t even know they are good.”
She was silent for a moment and then said:
“What we really need is a link of some kind. A link between one of thesenames and the Pale Horse. Something tangible18.”
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收听单词发音
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1
genie
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| n.妖怪，神怪 | |
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repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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3
curb
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| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
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4
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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6
prospective
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| adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的 | |
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7
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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8
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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9
marital
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| adj.婚姻的，夫妻的 | |
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10
ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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11
pussy
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| n.(儿语)小猫，猫咪 | |
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12
robustly
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| adv.要用体力地，粗鲁地 | |
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13
activate
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| vt.使活动起来，使开始起作用 | |
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musingly
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| adv.沉思地，冥想地 | |
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15
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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16
idiocy
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| n.愚蠢 | |
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17
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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18
tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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