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

shouted to one another in Greek, but they said no word to
him. Nevertheless they turned and stared at him when he
left them, and when he had crossed the plateau and still
went on, all five of them cantered after to the edge of
their green land; for above the high green plateau of the
centaurs is nothing but naked mountains, and the last green
thing that is seen by the mountaineer as he travels to Tong
Tong Tarrup is the grass that the centaurs trample. He came
into the snow fields that the mountain wears like a cape,
its head being bare above it, and still climbed on. The
centaurs watched him with increasing wonder.
Not even fabulous beasts were near him now, nor strange
demoniac trees -- nothing but snow and the clean bare crag
above it on which was Tong Tong Tarrup. All day he climbed
and evening found him above the snow-line; and soon he came
to the stairway cut in the rock and in sight of that
grizzled man, the long porter of Tong Tong Tarrup, sitting
mumbling amazing memories to himself and expecting in vain
from the stranger a gift of bash.
It seems that as soon as the stranger arrived at the
bastion gateway, tired though he was, he demanded lodgings
at once that commanded a good view of the Edge of the
World. But the long porter, that grizzled man, disappointed
of his bash, demanded the stranger's story to add to his
memories before he would show him the way. And this is the
story, if the long porter has told me the truth and if his
memory is still what it was. And when the story was told,
the grizzled man arose, and, dangling his musical keys, went
up through door after door and by many stairs and led the
stranger to the top-most house, the highest roof in the
world, and in its parlour showed him the parlour window.
There the tired stranger sat down in a chair and gazed out
of the window sheer over the Edge of the World. The window
was shut, and in its glittering panes the twilight of the
World's Edge blazed and danced, partly like glow-worms'
lamps and partly like the sea; it went by rippling, full of
wonderful moons. But the traveller did not look at the
wonderful moons. For from the abyss there grew with their
roots in far constellations a row of hollyhocks, and amongst
them a small green garden quivered and trembled as scenes
tremble in water; higher up, ling in bloom was floating upon
the twilight, more and more floated up till all the twilight
was purple; the little green garden low down was hung in the
midst of it. And the garden down below, and the ling all
round it, seemed all to be trembling and drifting on a
song. For the twilight was full of a song that sang and
rang along the edges of the World, and the green garden and
the ling seemed to flicker and ripple with it as the song
rose and fell, and an old woman was singing it down in the
garden. A bumble-bee sailed across from over the Edge of