"Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Artist of the Beautiful" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

1844

TWICE-TOLD TALES

THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

AN ELDERLY MAN, with his pretty daughter on his arm, was passing
along the street, and emerged from the gloom of the cloudy evening
into the light that fell across the pavement from the window of a
small shop. It was a projecting window; and on the inside were
suspended a variety of watches- pinchbeck, silver, and one or two of
gold- all with their faces turned from the street, as if churlishly
disinclined to inform the wayfarers what o'clock it was. Seated within
the shop, sidelong to the window, with his pale face bent earnestly
over some delicate piece of mechanism, on which was thrown the
concentrated lustre of a shade-lamp, appeared a young man.

"What can Owen Warland be about?" muttered old Peter Hovenden-
himself a retired watchmaker, and the former master of this same young
man, whose occupation he was now wondering at. "What can the fellow be
about? These six months past, I have never come by his shop without
seeing him just as steadily at work as now. It would be a flight
beyond his usual foolery to seek for the Perpetual Motion. And yet I
know enough of my old business to be certain, that what he is now so
busy with is no part of the machinery of a watch."

"Perhaps, father," said Annie, without showing much interest in the
question, "Owen is inventing a new kind of time-keeper. I am sure he
has ingenuity enough."

"Pooh, child! he has not the sort of ingenuity to invent anything
better than a Dutch toy," answered her father, who had formerly been
put to much vexation by Owen Warland's irregular genius. "A plague
on such ingenuity! All the effect that ever I knew of it was, to spoil
the accuracy of some of the best watches in my shop. He would turn the
sun out of its orbit, and derange the whole course of time, if, as I
said before, his ingenuity could grasp anything bigger than a
child's toy!"

"Hush, father! he hears you," whispered Annie, pressing the old
man's arm. "His ears are as delicate as his feelings, and you know how
easily disturbed they are. Do let us move on."

So Peter Hovenden and his daughter Annie plodded on, without
further conversation, until, in a by-street of the town, they found
themselves passing the open door of a blacksmith's shop. Within was
seen the forge, now blazing up, and illuminating the high and dusky
roof, and now confining its lustre to a narrow precinct of the