75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

Just then we heard a noise on her deck, and we looked up and saw that a man had come out of her front cabin and was looking down at us very peaceably. He was dressed in a black uniform set out with rusty gold lace, and he had a great cutlass by his side in a brass sheath. ‘I’m Captain Bartholomew Roberts,’ he said, in a gentleman’s voice, ‘put in for recruits. I seem to have brought her rather far up the harbour.’

‘Harbour!’ cried landlord; ‘why, you’re fifty miles from the sea.’

Captain Roberts didn’t turn a hair. ‘So much as that, is it?’ he said coolly. ‘Well, it’s of no consequence.’

Landlord was a bit upset at this. ‘I don’t want to be unneighbourly,’ he said, ‘but I wish you hadn’t brought your ship into my field. You see, my wife sets great store on these turnips.’

The captain took a pinch of snuff out of a fine gold box that he pulled out of his pocket, and dusted his fingers with a silk handkerchief in a very genteel fashion. ‘I’m only here for a few months,’ he said; ‘but if a testimony of my esteem would pacify your good lady I should be content,’ and with the words he loosed a great gold brooch from the neck of his coat and tossed it down to landlord.

Landlord blushed as red as a strawberry. ‘I’m not denying she’s fond of jewellery,’ he said, ‘but it’s too much for half a sackful of turnips.’ And indeed it was a handsome brooch.

The captain laughed. ‘Tut, man,’ he said, ‘it’s a forced sale, and you deserve a good price. Say no more about it;’ and nodding good-day to us, he turned on his heel and went into the cabin. Landlord walked back up the lane like a man with a weight off his mind. ‘That tempest has blowed me a bit of luck,’ he said; ‘the missus will be much pleased with that brooch. It’s better than blacksmith’s guinea, any day.’

Ninety-seven was Jubilee year, the year of the second Jubilee, you remember, and we had great doings at Fairfield, so that we hadn’t much time to bother about the ghost-ship though anyhow it isn’t our way to meddle in things that don’t concern us. Landlord, he saw his tenant once or twice when he was hoeing his turnips and passed the time of day, and landlord’s wife wore her new brooch to church every Sunday. But we didn’t mix much with the ghosts at any time, all except an idiot lad there was in the village, and he didn’t know the difference between a man and a ghost, poor innocent! On Jubilee Day, however, somebody told Captain Roberts why the church bells were ringing, and he hoisted a flag and fired off his guns like a loyal Englishman. ’Tis true the guns were shotted, and one of the round shot knocked a hole in Farmer Johnstone’s barn, but nobody thought much of that in such a season of rejoicing.

It wasn’t till our celebrations were over that we noticed that anything was wrong in Fairfield. ’Twas shoemaker who told me first about it one morning at the “Fox and Grapes.” ‘You know my great great-uncle?’ he said to me.

‘You mean Joshua, the quiet lad,’ I answered, knowing him well.

‘Quiet!’ said shoemaker indignantly. ‘Quiet you call him, coming home at three o’clock every morning as drunk as a magistrate and waking up the whole house with his noise.’

‘Why, it can’t be Joshua!’ I said, for I knew him for one of the most respectable young ghosts in the village.

‘Joshua it is,’ said shoemaker; ‘and one of these nights he’ll find himself out in the street if he isn’t careful.’

This kind of talk shocked me, I can tell you, for I don’t like to hear a man abusing his own family, and I could hardly believe that a steady youngster like Joshua had taken to drink. But just then in came butcher Aylwin in such a temper that he could hardly drink his beer. ‘The young puppy! the young puppy!’ he kept on saying; and it was some time before shoemaker and I found out that he was talking about his ancestor that fell at Senlac [412] .

‘Drink?’ said shoemaker hopefully, for we all like company in our misfortunes, and butcher nodded grimly.

‘The young noodle,’ he said, emptying his tankard.

Well, after that I kept my ears open, and it was the same story all over the village. There was hardly a young man among all the ghosts of Fairfield who didn’t roll home in the small hours of the morning the worse for liquor. I used to wake up in the night and hear them stumble past my house, singing outrageous songs. The worst of it was that we couldn’t keep the scandal to ourselves and the folk at Greenhill began to talk of ‘sodden Fairfield’ and taught their children to sing a song about us:

‘Sodden Fairfield, sodden Fairfield, has no use for bread-and-butter,

Rum for breakfast, rum for dinner, rum for tea, and rum for supper!’

We are easy-going in our village, but we didn’t like that.