"MacDONALD, George - The Wow O' Riven aka The Bell" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald George)

remotest feeling of curiosity as to what the inward and consistent causes of the
outward abnormal condition might be. Tenderness was the divine comforting she
needed; and it was altogether absent from her brother's character and behaviour.
Her neighbours looked on her with some interest, but they rather shunned than
courted her acquaintance; especially after the return of certain nervous
attacks, to which she had been subject in childhood, and which were again
brought on by the events I must relate. It is curious how certain diseases
repel, by a kind of awe, the sympathies of the neighbours: as if, by the fact of
being subject to them, the patient were removed into another realm of existence,
from which, like the dead with the living, she can hold communion with those
around her only partially, and with a mixture of dread pervading the
intercourse. Thus some of the deepest, purest wells of spiritual life, are, like
those in old castles, choked up by the decay of the outer walls. But what tended
more than anything, perhaps, to keep up the painful unrest of her soul (for the
beauty of her character was evident in the fact that the irritation seldom
reached her mind), was a circumstance at which, in its present connection, some
of my readers will smile, and others feel a shudder corresponding in kind to
that of Elsie.
Her brother was very fond of a rather small, but ferocious-looking bull-dog,
which followed close at his heels, wherever he went, with hanging head and
slouching gait, never leaping or racing about like other dogs. When in the
house, he always lay under his master's chair. He seemed to dislike Elsie, and
she felt an unspeakable repugnance to him. Though she never mentioned her
aversion, her brother easily saw it by the way in which she avoided the animal;
and attributing it entirely to fear-which indeed had a great share in the
matter-he would cruelly aggravate it, by telling her stories of the fierce
hardihood and relentless persistency of this kind of animal. He dared not yet
further increase her terror by offering to set the creature upon her, because it
was doubtful whether he might be able to restrain him; but the mental suffering
which he occasioned by this heartless conduct, and for which he had no sympathy,
was as severe as many bodily sufferings to which he would have been sorry to
subject her. Whenever the poor girl happened inadvertently to pass near the dog,
which was seldom, a low growl made her aware of his proximity, and drove her to
a quick retreat. He was, in fact, the animal impersonation of the animal
opposition which she had continually to endure. Like chooses like; and the
bulldog in her brother made choice of the bull-dog out of him for his companion.
So her day was one of shrinking fear and multiform discomfort.
But a nature capable of so much distress, must of necessity be capable of a
corresponding amount of pleasure; and in her case this was manifest in the fact
that sleep and the quiet of her own room restored her wonderfully. If she were
only let alone, a calm mood, filled with images of pleasure, soon took
possession of her mind.
Her acquaintance with the fool had commenced some ten years previous to the time
I write of, when she was quite a little girl, and had come from the country with
her brother, who, having taken a small farm close to the town, preferred
residing in the town to occupying the farmhouse, which was not comfortable. She
looked at first with some terror on his uncouth appearance, and with much
wonderment on his strange dress. This wonder was heightened by a conversation
she overheard one day in the street, between the fool and a little pale-faced
boy, who, approaching him respectfully, said, "Weel, cornel!" "Weel, laddie!"