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

crumble. Little remained but the gable wall, immensely thick, and covered with
ancient ivy. The rays of the setting sun fell on a mound at its foot, not green
like the rest, but of a rich red-brown in the rosy sunset, and evidently but
newly heaped up. Her eyes, too, rested upon it. Slowly the sun sank below the
near horizon.
As the last brilliant point disappeared, the ivy darkened, and a wind arose and
shook all its leaves, making them look cold and troubled; and to Elsie's ear
came a low faint sound, as from a far-off bell. But close beside her-and she
started and shivered at the sound-rose a deep, monotonous, almost sepulchral
voice, "Come hame, come hame! The wow, the wow!"
At once she understood the whole. She sat in the churchyard of the ancient
parish church of Ruthven; and when she lifted up her eyes, there she saw, in the
half-ruined belfry, the old bell, all but hidden with ivy, which the passing
wind had roused to utter one sleepy tone; and there beside her, stood the fool
with the bell on his arm; and to him and to her the wow o' Rivven said, "Come
hame, come hame!" Ah, what did she want in the whole universe of God but a home?
And though the ground beneath was hard, and the sky overhead far and boundless,
and the hillside lonely and companionless, yet somewhere within the visible and
beyond these the outer surface of creation, there might be a home for her; as
round the wintry house the snows lie heaped up cold and white and dreary all the
long forenight, while within, beyond the closed shutters, and giving no glimmer
through the thick stone wall, the fires are blazing joyously, and the voice and
laughter of young unfrozen children are heard, and nothing belongs to winter but
the grey hairs on the heads of the parents, within whose warm hearts childlike
voices are heard, and childlike thoughts move to and fro. The kernel of winter
itself is spring, or a sleeping summer.
It was no wonder that the fool, cast out of the earth on a far more desolate
spot than this, should seek to return within her bosom at this place of open
doors, and should call it home. For surely the surface of the earth had no home
for him. The mound at the foot of the gable contained the body of one who had
shown him kindness. He had followed the funeral that afternoon from the town,
and had remained behind with the bell. Indeed it was his custom, though Elsie
had not known it, to follow every funeral going to this, his favourite
churchyard of Ruthven; and, possibly in imitation of its booming, for it was
still tolled at the funerals, he had given the old bell the name of the wow, and
had translated its monotonous clangour into the articulate sounds-come hame,
come hame. What precise meaning he attached to the words, it is impossible to
say; but it was evident that the place possessed a strange attraction for him,
drawing him towards it by the cords of some spiritual magnetism. It is possible
that in the mind of the idiot there may have been some feeling about this
churchyard and bell, which, in the mind of another, would have become a grand
poetic thought; a feeling as if the ghostly old bell hung at the church door of
the invisible world, and ever and anon rung out joyous notes (though they
sounded sad in the ears of the living), calling to the children of the unseen to
come home, come home. She sat for some time in silence; for the bell did not
ring again, and the fool spoke no more; till the dews began to fall, when she
rose and went home, followed by her companion, who passed the night in the barn.
From that hour Elsie was furnished with a visual image of the rest she sought;
an image which, mingling with deeper and holier thoughts, became, like the bow
set in the cloud, the earthly pledge and sign of the fulfilment of heavenly