"Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Birthmark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom
their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as
the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death,
Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark
a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever
Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.

At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he
invariably, and without intending it- nay, in spite of a purpose to
the contrary- reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at
first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of
thought, and modes of feeling, that it became the central point of
all. With the morning twilight, Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's
face, and recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat
together at the evening hearth, his eyes wandered stealthily to her
cheek, and beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the
spectral Hand that wrote mortality where he would fain have
worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed
but a glance, with the peculiar expression that his face often wore,
to change the roses of her cheek into a death-like paleness, amid
which the Crimson Hand was brought strongly out, like a bas-relief
of ruby on the whitest marble.

Late, one night, when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly
to betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the
first time, voluntarily took up the subject.

"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble
attempt at a smile- "have you any recollection of a dream, last night,
about this odious Hand?"

"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting; but then he
added in a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the
real depth of his emotion: "I might well dream of it; for, before I
fell asleep, it had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."

"And you did dream of it," continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say-
"A terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible
to forget this one expression? 'It is in her heart now- we must have
it out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
that dream."

The mind is in a sad state, when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream.
He had fancied himself, with his servant Aminadab, attempting an
operation for the removal of the birthmark. But the deeper went the
knife, the deeper sank the Hand, until at length its tiny grasp