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

late one night from the library, and who had been under the care of Sir
William Gull ever since, a perfect martyr to nervous disorders; and of old
Madame de Tremouillac, who, having wakened up one morning early and seen a
skeleton seated in an armchair by the fire reading her diary, had been
confined to her bed for six weeks with an attack of brain fever, and, in her
recovery, had become reconciled to the Church, and broken off her connection
with that Notorious sceptic Monsieur de Voltaire. He remembered the terrible
night when the wicked Lord Canterville was found choking in his
dressing-room, with the knave of diamonds half-way down his throat, and
confessed, just before he died, that he had cheated Charles James Fox out of
L50,000 at Crockford's by means of that very card, and swore that the ghost
had made him swallow it. All his great achievements came back to him again,
from the butler who had shot himself in the pantry because he had seen a
green hand tapping at the window pane, to the beautiful Lady Stutfield, who
was always obliged to wear a black velvet band round her throat to hide the
mark of five fingers burnt upon her white skin, and who drowned herself at
last in the carp-pond at the end of the King's Walk. With the enthusiastic
egoism of the true artist he went over his most celebrated performances, and
smiled bitterly to himself as he recalled to mind his last appearance as
"Red Reuben, or the Strangled Babe," his debut as "Gaunt
Gibeon, the Blood-sucker of Bexley Moor," and the furore he had excited
one lovely June evening by merely playing ninepins with his own bones upon
the law-tennis ground. And after all this, some wretched modern Americans
were to come and offer him the Rising Sun Lubricator, and throw pillows at
his head! It was quite unbearable. Besides, no ghost in history had ever
been treated in this manner. Accordingly, he determined to have vengeance,
and remained till daylight in an attitude of deep thought.


III

The next morning, when the Otis family met at breakfast, they discussed
the ghost at some length. The United States Minister was naturally a little
annoyed to find that his present had not been accepted. "I have no
wish," he said, "to do the ghost any personal injury, and I must
say that, considering the length of time he has been in the house, I don't
think it is at all polite to throw pillows at him" - a very just
remark, at which, I am sorry to say, the twins burst into shouts of
laughter. "Upon the other hand," he continued, "if he really
declines to use the Rising Sun Lubricator, we shall have to take his chains
from him. It would be quite impossible to sleep, with such a noise going on
outside the bedrooms."
For the rest of the week, however, they were undisturbed, the only
thing that excited any attention being the continual renewal of the
blood-stain on the library floor. This certainly was very strange, as the
door was always locked at night by Mr. Otis, and the windows kept closely
barred. The chameleon-like colour, also, of the stain excited a good deal of
comment. Some mornings it was a dull (almost Indian) red, then it would be
vermilion, then a rich purple, and once when they came down for family
prayers, according to the simple rites of the Free American Reformed