"Lisa Tuttle - Ghosts and Other Lovers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tuttle Lisa)

fire in your room. Rest and keep warm and youтАЩll be as right as rain by tomorrow.тАЭ

Eustacia stopped crying, pleased to know she would have the luxury of a fire in her room, and the still
greater luxury of being allowed to do nothing at all.

In a family of hard workers, Eustacia was the lazy one. Lydia, too, had disliked the labor required of
daughters in a house without servants, but Lydia was never idle. She enjoyed sewing, particularly
embroidery and fine needlework, loved music, and was often to be found reading improving books.
Whatever time she could steal from chores she invested in her own artistic and intellectual pursuits.
Eustacia, on the other hand, enjoyed conversation and reading novels, but was happiest doing nothing.
She liked to sleep, she liked to dream, she liked to muse and build castles in the air, sitting by the fire in
the winter, or beneath a shady tree in the summer.
Although Mildred and Constance often castigated Eustacia for laziness, Lydia had formed an alliance
with her, believing her younger sister was, like herself, of an artistic temperament. She encouraged
Eustacia to forget her present woes by thinking of the happiness that would be hers in a few years, once
she was married and the mistress of her own household. She, after all, had married well: a man who gave
her a piano as a birthday present, and paid for private lessons. Their house in town was staffed by a
cook, two maids, and a manservant, and there was a boy who came to do the garden twice a week.
LydiaтАЩs husband was not rich, but he was, as they said, тАЬcomfortable,тАЭ as well as being very much in love
with his wife. Lydia was not so vulgar as to propose that Eustacia тАЬmarry money,тАЭ but her husband knew
a number of young men who were up and coming in the business world; men who would soon be able to
afford a wife. It was to give Eustacia a chance of meeting an appropriate mate that Lydia often invited her
to stay and took her out to concerts, soir├йes, balls, and other social gatherings.

Eustacia went along with Lydia wherever and whenever she was asked, but wasnтАЩt sure she believed
marriage was the answer. She was not beautiful; more fatally, she lacked the personal charm that made
men dote on Lydia. She might find a husband, but surely not romance. And even if she managed to marry
a man who loved her, who was not a farmer, not poor, and not a petty tyrant like her father, her fate
might still be that of her mother: to bear ten live children in twelve years, and die of exhaustion. She was
not eager to exchange one form of servitude for another.

In the bedroom she had once shared with Lydia and Constance but now had to herself, Eustacia laid a
fire in the hearth. The clear, sticky muck on her hands transferred itself to logs and paper but they burned
with no apparent ill effect. When the fire was drawing nicely, she undressed and put on her nightgown.
By that time she was yawning mightily, and as soon as she had crawled into bed she felt herself slipping
deliciously into sleep.

When she woke the next morning her eyes were sticky, the lashes so gummed together that it was a
struggle to open them; and it was not only her eyes which were affected. All over her face, her head, her
hands, her upper body, she could feel the tight, sticky pull of dried mucus. It was there like spiderwebs,
or a welter of snail tracks, criss-crossing her face, looping around her neck, her arms, and dried stiffly in
her hair. She felt a myriad cracks open as her face convulsed in disgust. A tortured moan escaped her
lips as she scrambled out of bed. The water in the pitcher was icy cold, but for once she didnтАЩt mind,
scarcely even noticed, as she splashed it onto hands and face and neck and chest, splashing it
everywhere in a panic to get the slimy stuff off. It was not cold but revulsion which made her shiver.

Eustacia was not the excessively sensitive, refined creature contemporary manners held women should
be. The daughter of a working farmer could not afford a weak stomach, but Eustacia knew that she was
not so fastidious, not so тАЬnice,тАЭ as her sisters, and this was a matter of some shame to her. Sometimes it
made her angry. It wasnтАЩt fair. Men didnтАЩt have to pretend they were made of porcelain, so why should