The room in the tower, and other stories — John Shaqi
The room in the tower, and other storiesBenson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
General
The room in the tower, and other stories
Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
English fiction -- 20th century; Ghost stories, English; Horror tales, English; Short stories, English
“Neither do I know the rules of motors,” I said; “and I don’t understand
you when you say that Guy Elphinstone’s machine was an irritable,
cross-grained brute, that liked running over chickens and rabbits. But I
think you subsequently said that the irritability may have been the
irritability of its owner. Did he mind being checked?”
“It made him blind-mad if it happened often,” said Harry. “I shall never
forget a drive I had with him once: there were hay-carts and
perambulators every hundred yards. It was perfectly ghastly; it was like
being with a madman. And when we got inside his gate, his dog came
running out to meet him. He did not go an inch out of his course: it was
worse than that--he went for it, just grinding his teeth with rage. I
never drove with him again.”
He stopped a moment, guessing what might be in my mind. “I say, you
mustn’t think--you mustn’t think----” he began.
“No, of course not,” said I.
Harry Combe-Martin’s house stood close to the weather-eaten, sandy
cliffs of the Suffolk shore, which are being incessantly gnawed away by
the hunger of the insatiable sea. Fathoms deep below it, and now many
hundred yards out, lies what was once the second port in England; but
now of the ancient town of Dunwich, and of its seven great churches,
nothing remains but one, and that ruinous and already half destroyed by
the falling cliff and the encroachments of the sea. Foot by foot, it too
is disappearing, and of the graveyard which surrounded it more than half
is gone, so that from the face of the sandy cliff on which it stands
there stick out like straws in glass, as Dante says, the bones of those
who were once committed there to the kindly and stable earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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