Читать онлайн «In a Shallow Grave»

Printed and bound in the European Community

by Nørhaven A/S, Viborg, Denmark

“WHAT you will need now you are about to be separated from the Army,” my captain had told me as I was picking up my mustering-out pay, “is what in the days of my grandfather they called a valet or maybe a hired man. Unless of course you want to stay in the Vets’ hospital, which you have more than every right to .  .  . But you will need someone to watch over you now .  .  . ”

I didn’t think about a valet and/or hired man until I was back home in Virginia for a week or so. Somehow all I thought about the first few days was how many birds there were singing in the early or premorning hours, I never heard such a fuss. I thought some too about my parents who had died whilst I was in service, and I thought about somebody else whom I am coming to very presently.

I kept sort of grinning thinking over the captain’s advice about valets and servants and hired men, but as another soldier who was being mustered out at the same time as me had quipped, “When you can’t even find anybody to shine your shoes anymore, let alone somebody to watch over you. ”

But behind all these practical considerations and worries, there was this flitting dim thought never absent but never put into words at this time, that down the road about two mile was living Widow Rance, who had been, though this seems a thousand years ago and must surely have passed out of her mind entirely, my childhood sweetheart.

But though I thought of her every moment asleep or awake, under the sound of all those bird choristers, it finally wasn’t my lifelong crush on her that made me hold my breath with panic but what was I to do with the little that was left of myself.

The Army doc, just before he signed my papers, had said, “Although your skin bears a total disfigurement from your war injuries, you ought to bear in mind, despite your outward appearance you have a wonderful fine and strong bone structure, and it is the bones that are the real measure of a man’s bearing and good looks. ”

In the darkness now sometimes after my return I would take out a large hand mirror and look at myself as if searching for the bones that he had said I should be so proud of. By moonlight it is true, I looked sort of almost normal, the scars, gashes, and discoloration sort of melting into the night .  .  . Yes, I needed a servant, I kept returning to this. No woman would take the job, that’s certain, though I would have preferred one. It would have to be not only a man, but a young one, for already you see I had my plan, and I would run his legs off. So I put some notices in the local papers advertising for him, for I knew then that I would court the Widow Rance through these letters I was going to write to her.