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

Bethmoora

byLord Dunsany



There is a faint freshness in theLondon night as though
somestrayed reveller of a breeze had left his comrades in
theKentish uplands and had entered the town by stealth.
The pavements are a little damp and shiny. Upon one's ears
thatat 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 dancedgoes
homewards. Somewhere a ball has closed its doors and
ended. Its yellow lights areout, its musicians are silent,
itsdancers have all gone into the night air, and Time has
saidof it, "Let it be past and over, and among the things
thatI 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
havewe even inLondon our faint forebodings of the dawn's
approach, which the birds and the beasts and the stars are
cryingaloud to the untrammelled fields.
At what moment I know not I perceive that the night
itself is irrecoverably overthrown. It is suddenly revealed
tome by the weary pallor of the street lamps that the
streetsare silent and nocturnal still, not because there is
anystrength in night, but because men have not yet arisen
from sleep to defy him. So have I seen dejected and untidy
guardsstill bearing antique muskets in palatial gateways,
althoughthe realms of the monarch that they guard have
shrunkto a single province which no enemy yet has troubled
tooverrun.
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
ofDoverare standing white to the morning, that the
sea-misthas lifted and is pouring inland.
And now men with a hose have come and are sluicing out
thestreets.
Behold now night is dead.
What memories, what fancies throng one's mind! A night
butjust now gathered out ofLondon by the hostile hand of
Time. A million common artificial things all cloaked for a
whilein mystery, like beggars robed in purple, and seated
on dread thrones. Four million people asleep, dreaming
perhaps. What worlds have they gone into? Whomhave they
met? But my thoughts are far off with Bethmoora in her