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

burst into flower. But as her senses recovered themselves, the face gradually
changed to her, as if the slow alteration of two years had been
phantasmagorically compressed into a few moments; and the glow departed from the
maiden's thoughts and words, and her soul found itself at the narrow window of
the present, from which she could behold but a dreary country.-From the street
came the iambic cry of the fool, "Come hame, come hame."
Tycho Brahe, I think, is said to have kept a fool, who frequently sat at his
feet in his study, and to whose mutterings he used to listen in the pauses of
his own thought. The shining soul of the astronomer drew forth the rainbow of
harmony from the misty spray of words ascending ever from the dark gulf into
which the thoughts of the idiot were ever falling. He beheld curious
concurrences of words therein; and could read strange meanings from
them-sometimes even received wondrous hints for the direction of celestial
inquiry, from what, to any other, and it may be to the fool himself, was but a
ceaseless and aimless babble. Such power lieth in words. It is not then to be
wondered at, that the sounds I have mentioned should fall on the ears of Elsie,
at such a moment, as a message from God Himself. This then-all this
dreariness-was but a passing show like the rest, and there lay somewhere for her
a reality-a home. The tears burst up from her oppressed heart. She received the
message, and prepared to go home. From that time her strength gradually sank,
but her spirits as steadily rose.
The strength of the fool, too, began to fail, for he was old. He bore all the
signs of age, even to the grey hairs, which betokened no wisdom. But one cannot
say what wisdom might be in him, or how far he had fought his own battle, and
been victorious. Whether any notion of a continuance of life and thought dwelt
in his brain, it is impossible to tell; but he seemed to have the idea that this
was not his home; and those who saw him gradually approaching his end, might
well anticipate for him a higher life in the world to come. He had passed
through this world without ever awaking to such a consciousness of being as is
common to mankind. He had spent his years like a weary dream through a long
night-a strange, dismal, unkindly dream; and now the morning was at hand. Often
in his dream had he listened with sleepy senses to the ringing of the bell, but
that bell would awake him at last. He was like a seed buried too deep in the
soil, to which the light has never penetrated, and which, therefore, has never
forced its way upwards to the open air, ever experienced the resurrection of the
dead. But seeds will grow ages after they have fallen into the earth; and,
indeed, with many kinds, and within some limits, the older the seed before it
germinates, the more plentiful the fruit. And may it not be believed of many
human beings, that, the Great Husbandman having sown them like seeds in the soil
of human affairs, there they lie buried a life long; and only after the
upturning of the soil by death reach a position in which the awakening of their
aspiration and the consequent growth become possible. Surely He has made nothing
in vain.
A violent cold and cough brought him at last near to his end, and hearing that
he was ill, Elsie ventured one bright spring day to go to see him. When she
entered the miserable room where he lay, he held out his hand to her with
something like a smile, and muttered feebly and painfully, "I'm gaein' to the
wow, nae to come back again." Elsie could not restrain her tears; while the old
man, looking fixedly at her, though with meaningless eyes, muttered, for the
last time, "Come hame! come hame!" and sank into a lethargy, from which nothing