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

Breakfast was an apple from his backpack, eaten on the march: not enough
for his belly, but that too was no longer the driving force it had been. He
had higher considerations now; with time so short, a grumbling gut seemed
less than urgent.

Oddly, with time so short, he felt himself totally unhurried. He would walk
back the way he had come, he would find his way into the town and so to the
solicitor - but not yet. Just now he would walk here, solitary among trees
and seeking nothing, driven by nothing...

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Which is how he came to D'Espщrance, called perhaps but quite undriven:
strolling where others before him had run, finding by chance what was his
already, though he meant to take only the briefest possession.

The path he took grew wider, though no better cared for. Tree roots had
broken it, in places the fall of leaves on leaves had buried it; but logic
and light discovered its route to him, not possible to lose it now. It
turned down the slope of the valley and found the brook again, and soon the
brook met something broader, too shallow for a river, too wide for a
stream. The path tracked the water until the water was suddenly gone,
plunging through an iron grid into a culvert, an arch of brick mounded by
earth. Steps climbed the mound, and so did he; and standing there above the
sound of water, he was granted his first sight of D'Espщrance.

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

Never any doubt of what he saw. He knew it in that instant, and his soul
sang.

The house was dark in its valley, built of stone washed dark by rains and
rains. Even where the sun touched, it kept its shadow.

A long front, with the implication of wings turned back behind, though he
couldn't see for certain even from this elevation, with the house full-face
and staring him down. A long front and small windows, three storeys and
then a mansard roof with dormers; in the centre a small portico sheltering
a high door, and he wasn't sure even the largest of his keys would open
such a door. Wasn't sure that it deserved to.

No lights, no movement: only dark windows in a dark wall, and the sun
striking brightly around it.

Between himself and the house there were formal gardens wrecked by growth,
rampant hedges and choked beds; but the hedges and beds stood only as a
frame to water. Long stone-lined pools were cut strict and square at the
corners, though they were green and stagnant now and the jutting
fountainheads were still; and below the gardens, lapping almost at his feet
now lay the deeper, darker waters of a lake. No need for the return journey