"Brenchley, Chaz - The Keys To D'esperance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Benchley Chaz)

It was after six o'clock, too late to call on the solicitor, and he didn't
plan to seek lodgings in town. His name was uncommon, and might be
recognised. Too proud to hide behind a false one, he preferred to sleep in
his blanket roll under whatever shelter he could find and so preserve this
unaccustomed anonymity at least for the short time he was here.

-------------------

Leaving the station and turning away from the town, he walked past a farm
where vociferous dogs discouraged him from stopping; and was passed in his
turn by a motor car, the driver pausing briefly to call down to him, to
offer him a ride to the next village. He refused as courteously as he knew
how, and left the road at the next stile.

Rising, the path degenerated quickly into a sheep-track between boulders,
and seemed to be taking him further and further from any hope of shelter.
He persevered, however, content to sleep with the stars if it meant he
could avoid company and questions. Whenever the path disappeared into bog,
he forced his way through heather or bracken until he found another; and at
last he came over the top of that valley's wall, and looked down into an
unexpected wood.

He'd not seen a tree since the train, and here there were spruce and larch
below him, oak and ash and others, secret and undisturbed. And a path too,
a clear and unequivocal path, discovered just in time as the light faded.

He followed the path into the wood, but not to its heart. He was tired and
thirsty, and he came soon to a brook where he could lie on his stomach and
draw water with his hands, fearing nothing and wanting nothing but to stay,
to move no more tonight.

He unrolled his blankets and made his simple bed there, heaping needles and
old leaves into a mattress between path and brook; and only at the last,
only a little before he slept did he think he saw the girl flit between
trees, there on the very edge of vision, pale and nameless as the light
slipped.

Pale and nameless and never to be named; nor seen again except like this, a
flicker of memory and a wicked trick of the light. He closed his eyes, not
to allow it passage. And breathed deeply, smelling sharp resins and the
mustiness of rot, and so cleared his mind, and so slept.

-------------------

Slept well and woke well, sunlight through trees and a clean cool breeze
and no fear, no anger, nothing but hunger in him. With the river's
resolution to come, all else was resolved; there was, there could be
nothing to be afraid of except that last great terror. And why be angry
against a town he'd left already, a world he would so shortly be leaving?