"Bram Stoker - Dracula" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

were striving to answer the call. I was becoming hypnotised!

Quicker and quicker danced the dust. The moonbeams seemed
to quiver as they went by me into the mass of gloom beyond.
More and more they gathered till they seemed to take dim phantom shapes.
And then I started, broad awake and in full possession of my senses,
and ran screaming from the place.

The phantom shapes, which were becoming gradually materialised
from the moonbeams, were those three ghostly women to whom
I was doomed.

I fled, and felt somewhat safer in my own room, where there was no moonlight,
and where the lamp was burning brightly.

When a couple of hours had passed I heard something stirring in
the Count's room, something like a sharp wail quickly suppressed.
And then there was silence, deep, awful silence, which chilled me.
With a beating heart, I tried the door, but I was locked in my prison,
and could do nothing. I sat down and simply cried.

As I sat I heard a sound in the courtyard without, the agonised
cry of a woman. I rushed to the window, and throwing it up,
peered between the bars.

There, indeed, was a woman with dishevelled hair, holding her
hands over her heart as one distressed with running.
She was leaning against the corner of the gateway.
When she saw my face at the window she threw herself forward,
and shouted in a voice laden with menace, "Monster, give
me my child!"

She threw herself on her knees,and raising up her hands,
cried the same words in tones which wrung my heart.
Then she tore her hair and beat her breast, and abandoned
herself to all the violences of extravagant emotion.
Finally, she threw herself forward, and though I could not see her,
I could hear the beating of her naked hands against the door.

Somewhere high overhead, probably on the tower, I heard the voice
of the Count calling in his harsh, metallic whisper. His call
seemed to be answered from far and wide by the howling of wolves.
Before many minutes had passed a pack of them poured, like a pent-up
dam when liberated, through the wide entrance into the courtyard.

There was no cry from the woman, and the howling of the wolves was but short.
Before long they streamed away singly, licking their lips.

I could not pity her, for I knew now what had become of her child,
and she was better dead.