"Bethmoora" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

Bethmoora

by Lord Dunsany




There is a faint freshness in the London night as though
some strayed reveller of a breeze had left his comrades in
the Kentish uplands and had entered the town by stealth.
The pavements are a little damp and shiny. Upon one's ears
that at this late hour have become very acute there hits the
tap of a remote footfall. Louder and louder grow the taps,
filling the whole night. And a black cloaked figure passes
by, and goes tapping into the dark. One who has danced goes
homewards. Somewhere a ball has closed its doors and
ended. Its yellow lights are out, its musicians are silent,
its dancers have all gone into the night air, and Time has
said of it, "Let it be past and over, and among the things
that I have put away."
Shadows begin to detach themselves from their great
gathering places. No less silently than those shadows that
are thin and dead move homewards the stealthy cats. Thus
have we even in London our faint forebodings of the dawn's
approach, which the birds and the beasts and the stars are
crying aloud to the untrammelled fields.
At what moment I know not I perceive that the night
itself is irrecoverably overthrown. It is suddenly revealed
to me by the weary pallor of the street lamps that the
streets are silent and nocturnal still, not because there is
any strength in night, but because men have not yet arisen
from sleep to defy him. So have I seen dejected and untidy
guards still bearing antique muskets in palatial gateways,
although the realms of the monarch that they guard have
shrunk to a single province which no enemy yet has troubled
to overrun.
And it is now manifest from the aspect of the street
lamps, those abashed dependants of night, that already
English mountain peaks have seen the dawn, that the cliffs
of Dover are standing white to the morning, that the
sea-mist has lifted and is pouring inland.
And now men with a hose have come and are sluicing out
the streets.
Behold now night is dead.
What memories, what fancies throng one's mind! A night
but just now gathered out of London by the hostile hand of
Time. A million common artificial things all cloaked for a
while in mystery, like beggars robed in purple, and seated
on dread thrones. Four million people asleep, dreaming