Читать книгу Susan Spray онлайн

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"And did you bruise his head?" she whispered.

"Surelye. I wallopped un wud a stick, so as all un's böans wur busted."

Sitting down among the grain with her rattle, Susan thought much about the little boy who was the coming Christ and had bruised the serpent's head. She thought beside of other good tales in the Book—of Jacob, who tied the furry skin over his hands, and of Esau crying out with a loud voice, "Bless me also, O my father," of the wrestling angel who with his finger put the Patriarch's thigh out of joint, of poor Joseph, at the bottom of a well, of Moses who saw God burning in a bush and David who played on the harp, and sang to his father's sheep, and threw stones at giants, just as Susan and the other children threw them at Christopher Kemp who was six and a half feet tall and wandering in his wits.

Of the New Testament she did not know so much, for the Brethren read chiefly in the Old and in the Book of Revelation. "And there fell a great star from heaven . . . and the name of the star is called Wormwood, and the third part of the waters . . . were made bitter." Susan herself had seen that star slide red and glowing down the still heavens one November night, and the next morning she had cried that the water tasted bitter, and it had been bitter for days, though no one would say so but herself. That was the terrible part of the Bible—bits of it were always coming true. It was read only on Sundays, and had all happened very long ago, but the fields round Copthorne rustled with the tread of Patriarchs, and the woods were worn in tunnels by angels' wings, and garden gates were closed with fire, and down the heavens travelled lost apocalyptic stars.