"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - Lady Eleanores Mantle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

dead were enemies of the living, and strove to draw them headlong,
as it were, into their own dismal pit. The public councils were
suspended, as if mortal wisdom might relinquish its devices, now
that an unearthly usurper had found his way into the ruler's
mansion. Had an enemy's fleet been hovering on the coast, or his
armies trampling on our soil, the people would probably have committed
their defence to that same direful conqueror who had wrought their own
calamity, and would permit no interference with his sway. This
conqueror had a symbol of his triumphs. It was a blood-red flag,
that fluttered in the tainted air, over the door of every dwelling
into which the Small-Pox had entered.

Such a banner was long since waving over the portal of the Province
House; for thence, as was proved by tracking its footsteps back, had
all this dreadful mischief issued. It had been traced back to a lady's
luxurious chamber- to the proudest of the proud- to her that was so
delicate, and hardly owned herself of earthly mould- to the haughty
one, who took her stand above human sympathies- to Lady Eleanore!
There remained no room for doubt that the contagion had lurked in that
gorgeous mantle, which threw so strange a grace around her at the
festival. Its fantastic splendor had been conceived in the delirious
brain of a woman on her death-bed, and was the last toil of her
stiffening fingers, which had interwoven fate and misery with its
golden threads. This dark tale, whispered at first, was now bruited
far and wide. The people raved against the Lady Eleanore, and cried
out that her pride and scorn had evoked a fiend, and that, between
them both, this monstrous evil had been born. At times, their rage and
despair took the semblance of grinning mirth; and whenever the red
flag of the pestilence was hoisted over another and yet another
door, they clapped their hands and shouted through the streets, in
bitter mockery: "Behold a new triumph for the Lady Eleanore!"

One day, in the midst of these dismal times, a wild figure
approached the portal of the Province House, and folding his arms,
stood contemplating the scarlet banner which a passing breeze shook
fitfully, as if to fling abroad the contagion that it typified. At
length, climbing one of the pillars by means of the iron balustrade,
he took down the flag and entered the mansion, waving it above his
head. At the foot of the staircase he met the Governor, booted and
spurred, with his cloak drawn around him, evidently on the point of
setting forth upon a journey.

"Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here?" exclaimed Shute,
extending his cane to guard himself from contact. "There is nothing
here but Death. Back- or you will meet him!"

"Death will not touch me, the banner-bearer of the pestilence!"
cried Jervase Helwyse, shaking the red flag aloft. "Death, and the
Pestilence, who wears the aspect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk
through the streets tonight, and I must march before them with this