"Lord Dunsany - The Long Porter's Tale (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

grizzled man on watch had long to wonder whether or not the
stranger brought him bash, the drug that gives a meaning to
the stars and seems to explain the twilight. And in the end
there was not a scrap of bash, and the stranger had nothing
better to offer that grizzled man than his mere story only.
It seems that the stranger's name was Gerald Jones, and
he always lived inLondon; but once as a child he had been
on a Northern moor. It was so long ago that he did not
remember how, only somehow or other he walked alone on the
moor, and all the ling was in flower. There was nothing in
sight but ling and heather and bracken, except, far off near
the sunset, on indistinct hills, there were little vague
patches that looked like the fields of men. With evening a
mist crept up and hid the hills, and still he went walking
on over the moor. And then he came to the valley, a tiny
valley in the midst of the moor, whose sides were incredibly
steep. He lay down and looked at it through the roots of
the ling. And a long, long way below him, in a garden by a
cottage, with hollyhocks all round her that were taller than
herself, there sat an old woman on a wooden chair, singing
in the evening. And the man had taken a fancy to the song
and remembered it after inLondon, and whenever it came to
his mind it made him think of evenings -- the kind you don't
get inLondon-- and he heard a soft wind going idly over
the moor and the bumble-bees in a hurry, and forgot the
noise of the traffic. And always, whenever he heard men
speak of Time, he grudged to Time most this song. Once
afterwards he went to that Northern moor again and found the
tiny valley, but there was no old woman in the garden, and
no one was singing a song. And either regret for the song
that the old woman had sung, on a summer evening twenty
years away and daily receding, troubled his mind, or else
the wearisome work that he did inLondon, for he worked for
a great firm that was perfectly useless; and he grew old
early, as men do in cities. And at last, when melancholy
brought only regret and the uselessness of his work gained
round him with age, he decided to consult a magician. So to
a magician he went and told him his troubles, and
particularly he told him how he had heard the song. "And
now," he said, "it is nowhere in the world."
"Of course it is not in the world," the magician said,
"but over the Edge of the World you may easily find it."
And he told the man that he was suffering from flux of time
and recommended a day at the Edge of the World. Jones asked
what part of the Edge of the World he should go to, and the
magician had heard Tong Tong Tarrup well spoken of; so he
paid him, as is usual, in opals, and started at once on the
journey. The ways to that town are winding; he took the
ticket at Victoria Station that they only give if they know
you: he went past Bleth: he went along the Hills of