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

they had gone astray into ancient times, and become children of the
past. At home, when their parents asked where they had loitered such a
weary while, and with whom they had been at play, the children would
talk of all the departed worthies of the Province, as far back as
Governor Belcher and the haughty dame of Sir William Phipps. It
would seem as though they had been sitting on the knees of these
famous personages, whom the grave had hidden for half a century, and
had toyed with the embroidery of their rich waistcoats, or roguishly
pulled the long curls of their flowing wigs. "But Governor Belcher has
been dead this many a year," would the mother say to her little boy.
"And did you really see him at the Province House?" "Oh yes, dear
mother! yes!" the half-dreaming child would answer. "But when old
Esther had done speaking about him he faded away out of his chair."
Thus, without affrighting her little guests, she led them by the
hand into the chambers of her own desolate heart, and made childhood's
fancy discern the ghosts that haunted there.

Living so continually in her own circle of ideas, and never
regulating her mind by a proper reference to present things, Esther
Dudley appears to have grown partially crazed. It was found that she
had no right sense of the progress and true state of the Revolutionary
War, but held a constant faith that the armies of Britain were
victorious on every field, and destined to be ultimately triumphant.
Whenever the town rejoiced for a battle won by Washington, or Gates,
or Morgan, or Greene, the news, in passing through the door of the
Province House, as through the ivory gate of dreams, became
metamorphosed into a strange tale of the prowess of Howe, Clinton,
or Cornwallis. Sooner or later it was her invincible belief the
colonies would be prostrate at the footstool of the King. Sometimes
she seemed to take for granted that such was already the case. On
one occasion, she startled the townspeople by a brilliant illumination
of the Province House, with candles at every pane of glass, and a
transparency of the King's initials and a crown of light in the
great balcony window. The figure of the aged woman in the most
gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and brocades was seen passing from
casement to casement, until she paused before the balcony, and
flourished a huge key above her head. Her wrinkled visage actually
gleamed with triumph, as if the soul within her were a festal lamp.

"What means this blaze of light? What does old Esther's joy
portend?" whispered a spectator. "It is frightful to see her gliding
about the chambers, and rejoicing there without a soul to bear her
company."

"It is as if she were making merry in a tomb," said another.

"Pshaw! It is no such mystery," observed an old man, after some
brief exercise of memory. "Mistress Dudley is keeping jubilee for
the King of England's birthday."