"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Minister's Black Veil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between
our souls! It is but a mortal veil- it is not for eternity! O! you
know not how lonely I am, and how frightened, to be alone behind my
black veil. Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity forever!"

"Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face," said she.

"Never! It cannot be!" replied Mr. Hooper.

"Then farewell!" said Elizabeth.

She withdrew her arm from his grasp, and slowly departed, pausing
at the door, to give one long shuddering gaze, that seemed almost to
penetrate the mystery of the black veil. But, even amid his grief, Mr.
Hooper smiled to think that only a material emblem had separated him
from happiness, though the horrors, which it shadowed forth, must be
drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers.

From that time no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper's black
veil, or, by a direct appeal, to discover the secret which it was
supposed to hide. By persons who claimed a superiority to popular
prejudice, it was reckoned merely an eccentric whim, such as often
mingles with the sober actions of men otherwise rational, and tinges
them all with its own semblance of insanity. But with the multitude,
good Mr. Hooper was irreparably a bugbear. He could not walk the
street with any peace of mind, so conscious was he that the gentle and
timid would turn aside to avoid him, and that others would make it a
point of hardihood to throw themselves in his way. The impertinence of
the latter class compelled him to give up his customary walk at sunset
to the burial ground; for when he leaned pensively over the gate,
there would always be faces behind the gravestones, peeping at his
black veil. A fable went the rounds that the stare of the dead
people drove him thence. It grieved him, to the very depth of his kind
heart, to observe how the children fled from his approach, breaking up
their merriest sports, while his melancholy figure was yet afar off.
Their instinctive dread caused him to feel more strongly than aught
else, that a preternatural horror was interwoven with the threads of
the black crape. In truth, his own antipathy to the veil was known
to be so great, that he never willingly passed before a mirror, nor
stooped to drink at a still fountain, lest, in its peaceful bosom,
he should be affrighted by himself. This was what gave plausibility to
the whispers, that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great
crime too horrible to be entirely concealed, or otherwise than so
obscurely intimated. Thus, from beneath the black veil, there rolled a
cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which
enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never
reach him. It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him
there. With self-shudderings and outward terrors, he walked
continually in its shadow, groping darkly within his own soul, or
gazing through a medium that saddened the whole world. Even the