"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - Old Esther Dudley" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

"Beshrew the old fool!" muttered Sir William Howe, growing
impatient of her obstinacy, and ashamed of the emotion into which he
had been betrayed. "She is the very moral of old-fashioned
prejudice, and could exist nowhere but in this musty edifice. Well,
then, Mistress Dudley, since you will needs tarry, I give the Province
House in charge to you. Take this key, and keep it safe until
myself, or some other Royal Governor, shall demand it of you."

Smiling bitterly at himself and her, he took the heavy key of the
Province House, and delivering it into the old lady's hands, drew
his cloak around him for departure. As the General glanced back at
Esther Dudley's antique figure, he deemed her well fitted for such a
charge, as being so perfect a representative of the decayed past- of
an age gone by, with its manners, opinions, faith and feelings, all
fallen into oblivion or scorn- of what had once been a reality, but
was now merely a vision of faded magnificence. Then Sir William Howe
strode forth, smiting his clinched hands together, in the fierce
anguish of his spirit; and old Esther Dudley was left to keep watch in
the lonely Province House, dwelling there with memory; and if Hope
ever seemed to flit around her, still was it Memory in disguise.

The total change of affairs that ensued on the departure of the
British troops did not drive the venerable lady from her stronghold.
There was not, for many years afterwards, a Governor of Massachusetts;
and the magistrates, who had charge of such matters, saw no
objection to Esther Dudley's residence in the Province House,
especially as they must otherwise have paid a hireling for taking care
of the premises, which with her was a labor of love. And so they
left her the undisturbed mistress of the old historic edifice. Many
and strange were the fables which the gossips whispered about her,
in all the chimney corners of the town. Among the time-worn articles
of furniture that had been left in the mansion there was a tall,
antique mirror, which was well worthy of a tale by itself, and perhaps
may hereafter be the theme of one. The gold of its heavily-wrought
frame was tarnished, and its surface so blurred, that the old
woman's figure, whenever she paused before it, looked indistinct and
ghostlike. But it was the general belief that Esther could cause the
Governors of the overthrown dynasty, with the beautiful ladies who had
once adorned their festivals, the Indian chiefs who had come up to the
Province House to hold council or swear allegiance, the grim
Provincial warriors, the severe clergymen- in short, all the pageantry
of gone days- all the figures that ever swept across the broad plate
of glass in former times- she could cause the whole to reappear, and
people the inner world of the mirror with shadows of old life. Such
legends as these, together with the singularity of her isolated
existence, her age, and the infirmity that each added winter flung
upon her, made Mistress Dudley the object both of fear and pity; and
it was partly the result of either sentiment that, amid all the
angry license of the times, neither wrong nor insult ever fell upon