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

her unprotected head. Indeed, there was so much haughtiness in her
demeanor towards intruders, among whom she reckoned all persons acting
under the new authorities, that it was really an affair of no small
nerve to look her in the face. And to do the people justice, stern
republicans as they had now become, they were well content that the
old gentlewoman, in her hoop petticoat and faded embroidery, should
still haunt the palace of ruined pride and overthrown power, the
symbol of a departed system, embodying a history in her person. So
Esther Dudley dwelt year after year in the Province House, still
reverencing all that others had flung aside, still faithful to her
King, who, so long as the venerable dame yet held her post, might be
said to retain one true subject in New England, and one spot of the
empire that had been wrested from him.

And did she dwell there in utter loneliness? Rumor said, not so.
Whenever her chill and withered heart desired warmth, she was wont
to summon a black slave of Governor Shirley's from the blurred mirror,
and send him in search of guests who had long ago been familiar in
those deserted chambers. Forth went the sable messenger, with the
starlight or the moonshine gleaming through him, and did his errand in
the burial ground, knocking at the iron doors of tombs, or upon the
marble slabs that covered them, and whispering to those within: "My
mistress, old Esther Dudley, bids you to the Province House at
midnight." And punctually as the clock of the Old South told twelve
came the shadows of the Olivers, the Hutchinsons, the Dudleys, all the
grandees of a by-gone generation, gliding beneath the portal into
the well-known mansion, where Esther mingled with them as if she
likewise were a shade. Without vouching for the truth of such
traditions, it is certain that Mistress Dudley sometimes assembled a
few of the stanch, though crestfallen, old tories, who had lingered in
the rebel town during those days of wrath and tribulation. Out of a
cobwebbed bottle, containing liquor that a royal Governor might have
smacked his lips over, they quaffed healths to the King, and babbled
treason to the Republic, feeling as if the protecting shadow of the
throne were still flung around them. But, draining the last drops of
their liquor, they stole timorously homeward, and answered not again
if the rude mob reviled them in the street.

Yet Esther Dudley's most frequent and favored guests were the
children of the town. Towards them she was never stern. A kindly and
loving nature, hindered elsewhere from its free course by a thousand
rocky prejudices, lavished itself upon these little ones. By bribes of
gingerbread of her own making, stamped with a royal crown, she tempted
their sunny sportiveness beneath the gloomy portal of the Province
House, and would often beguile them to spend a whole playday there,
sitting in a circle round the verge of her hoop petticoat, greedily
attentive to her stories of a dead world. And when these little boys
and girls stole forth again from the dark mysterious mansion, they
went bewildered, full of old feelings that graver people had long
ago forgotten, rubbing their eyes at the world around them as if