"Dunsany, Lord - collection - Tales of Three Hemispheres" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

jagged hills,--they say they saw London.
There could have been no moon that night, but they say there was a multitude
of stars. Mists had come rolling up at evening about the pinnacles of
unexplored red peaks that clustered round the camp. But they say the mist
must have cleared later on; at any rate they swear they could see London,
see it and hear the roar of it. Both say they saw it not as they knew it at
all, not debased by hundreds of thousands of lying advertisements, but
transfigured, all its houses magnificent, its chimneys rising grandly into
pinnacles, its vast squares full of the most gorgeous trees, transfigured
and yet London.
Its windows were warm and happy, shining at night, the lamps in their long
rows welcomed you, the public-houses were gracious jovial places; yet it was
London.
They could smell the smells of London, hear London songs, and yet it was
never the London that they knew; it was as though they had looked on some
strange woman's face with the eyes of her lover. For of all the towns of the
earth or cities of song; of all the spots there be, unhallowed or hallowed,
it seemed to those two men then that the city they saw was of all places the
most to be desired by far. They say a barrel organ played quite near htem,
they say a coster was singing, they admit that he was singing out of tune,
they admit a cockney accent, and yet they say that that song had in it
something that no earthly song had ever had before, and both men say that
they would have wept but that there was a feeling about their heartstrings
that was far too deep for tears. They believe that the longing of this
masterful man, that was able to rule a safari by raising a hand, had been so
strong at the last that it had impressed itself deeply upon nature and had
caused a mirage that may not fade wholly away, perhaps for several years.
I tried to establish by questions the truth or reverse of this story, but
the two men's tempers had been so spoiled by Africa that they were not up to
cross-examination. They would not even say if their camp-fires were still
burning. They say that they saw the London lights all round them from eleven
o'clock till midnight, they could hear London voices and the sound of the
traffic clearly, and over all, a little misty perhaps, but unmistakably
London, arose the great metropolis.
After midnight London quivered a little and grew more indistinct, the sound
of the traffic began to dwindle away, voices seemed farther off, ceased
altogether, and all was quiet once more where the mirage shimmered and
faded, and a bull rhinoceros coming down through the stillness snorted, and
watered at the Carlton Club.




Tales of Three Hemispheres -- Chapter 2




HOW THE OFFICE OF POSTMAN FELL VACANT IN OFFORD-UNDER-THE-WOLD
THE DUTIES of postman at Offord-under-the-Wold carried Amuel Sleggins