Charles Palliser Read Online Free PDF Page B

sitting-room I found my mother and Bissett waiting for me sternly.
    “That was very naughty, Johnnie,” said my mother. “I don’t know what has got into you today. I was going to tell you something nice but now it will have to wait until you deserve to hear it.”
    And so, truly like a disgraced prisoner with nothing to say on his own behalf, I was handed over to my guard and led away.
    I had always dreaded the journey up the ancient staircase with the treads creaking behind us to my room in the older part of the house, and so even on this occasion, as soon as Bissett and I left the sitting-room I reached out for her hand.
    “Get along with you,” she said irritably, pushing my hand away. “If you’re old enough to worrit and fret your poor mamma so, you’re too old to need your nurse in the dark.”
    It wasn’t the darkness that terrified me but the mysterious shapes and shadows created by the flickerings of the candle as if it were summoning creatures of the night that scuttled out of sight as you moved towards them, like the huge spiders I saw only too often and which seemed to me to have more legs than could ever be required for any innocent purpose. I had particularly loathed them ever since Bissett had described to me how they fed on living creatures.
    “Why,” Bissett scolded, “for all your bold sauciness, I believe you’re affrighted of your own shadder.”
    Indignant at this charge, I hurried ahead and in a moment we gained my room which was at the end of a short dark passage that led from the 18
    THE HUFFAMS

    landing. It was small and narrow with a floor that sloped steeply downwards towards the windows, while the low ceiling was sharply angled, because of the steeply-pitched roof, so that it, too, converged towards the end of the room where the window was. There was little space in the room for furniture, and apart from an ancient black press and a chair, there was only an old chest in which I kept my play-things. A threadbare Turkey-carpet covered the floor beside my bed, and on the walls were two framed prints that my mother had given me: a large coloured engraving of the Battle of Trafalgar — a mass of tattered sails and puffs of smoke — and above it a small mezzotint of my hero, Admiral Nelson.
    “Now no more of your nonsense. Hurry and get into bed,” Bissett scolded.
    “Where do you think that man is now?” I asked thoughtfully.
    Indignantly she replied: “I’m sure I don’t know, but I dare say miles from here, asleep in some ditch.”
    “How I should like to sleep in a ditch!”
    “Mebbe one day you will,” she said grimly. “And for sartin if you carry on as you have today. But I’ll wager he ain’t the only one abroad now. That gal won’t be home tonight, mark my words. Nor most probably in the morning nayther. Why your mither lets her get away with scamping her work … ! Well, ’tis not my place to say. But this is what comes of dealing with the ungodly. ’Tis no better than heathen, this parish, and as the Good Book says, evil communications corrupt.”
    Now, at last washed, and clad in my night-shirt, I prepared to clamber into bed. This was not easy for it was in a sort of ancient oaken box fitted into a recess by the door and was several feet above the level of the floor.
    “I’ll warrant your mamma ’ull not come up tonight when you’ve been so bad,” Bissett said as she tucked my bedclothes in.
    I didn’t believe this but naughtily I said: “Then will you tell me a story instead?”
    “You know very well I shall not. Stories are lies.”
    “But the Bible is full of stories,” I said.
    “That’s quite different, and well you know it.”
    “How is it different?”
    “You ask too many questions. Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies.”
    “Why should anyone lie?” I demanded. “And if you can tell me a lie then you can tell me a story as well since you’ve just said they’re the same thing.”
    “You’re a wise child, Master Johnnie,”