"Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Hollow of the Three Hills" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

1830

TWICE-TOLD TALES

THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

IN THOSE STRANGE OLD TIMES, when fantastic dreams and madmen's
reveries were realized among the actual circumstances of life, two
persons met together at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady,
graceful in form and fair of feature, though pale and troubled, and
smitten with an untimely blight in what should have been the fullest
bloom of her years; the other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman,
of ill-favored aspect, and so withered, shrunken, and decrepit, that
even the space since she began to decay must have exceeded the
ordinary term of human existence. In the spot where they
encountered, no mortal could observe them. Three little hills stood
near each other, and down in the midst of them sunk a hollow basin,
almost mathematically circular, two or three hundred feet in
breadth, and of such depth that a stately cedar might but just be
visible above the sides. Dwarf pines were numerous upon the hills, and
partly fringed the outer verge of the intermediate hollow, within
which there was nothing but the brown grass of October, and here and
there a tree trunk that had fallen long ago, and lay mouldering with
no green successor from its roots. One of these masses of decaying
wood, formerly a majestic oak, rested close beside a pool of green and
sluggish water at the bottom of the basin. Such scenes as this (so
gray tradition tells) were once the resort of the Power of Evil and
his plighted subjects; and here, at midnight or on the dim verge of
evening, they were said to stand round the mantling pool, disturbing
its putrid waters in the performance of an impious baptismal rite. The
chill beauty of an autumnal sunset was now gilding the three
hill-tops, whence a paler tint stole down their sides into the hollow.

"Here is our pleasant meeting come to pass," said the aged crone,
"according as thou hast desired. Say quickly what thou wouldst have of
me, for there is but a short hour that we may tarry here."

As the old withered woman spoke, a smile glimmered on her
countenance, like lamplight on the wall of a sepulchre. The lady
trembled, and cast her eyes upward to the verge of the basin, as if
meditating to return with her purpose unaccomplished. But it was not
so ordained.

"I am a stranger in this land, as you know," said she at length.
"Whence I come it matters not; but I have left those behind me with
whom my fate was intimately bound, and from whom I am cut off forever.
There is a weight in my bosom that I cannot away with, and I have come
hither to inquire of their welfare."