"William Morris - The Wood Beyond the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris William)

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 The Wood
Beyond the
World

By
William Morris




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 CHAPTER I

OF GOLDEN WALTER AND HIS FATHER

Awhile ago there was a young man dwelling in a great and goodly city by the sea which had to
name Langton on Holm. He was but of five and twenty winters, a fair-faced man, yellow-haired,
tall and strong; rather wiser than foolisher than young men are mostly wont; a valiant youth, and
a kind; not of many words but courteous of speech; no roisterer, nought masterful, but peaceable
and knowing how to forbear: in a fray a perilous foe, and a trusty war-fellow. His father, with
whom he was dwelling when this tale begins, was a great merchant, richer than a baron of the
land, a head-man of the greatest of the Lineages of Langton, and a captain of the Porte; he was of
the Lineage of the Goldings, therefore was he called Bartholomew Golden, and his son Golden
Walter.


Now ye may well deem that such a youngling as this was looked upon by all as a lucky man
without a lack; but there was this flaw in his lot, whereas he had fallen into the toils of love of a
woman exceeding fair, and had taken her to wife, she nought unwilling as it seemed. But when
they had been wedded some six months he found by manifest tokens, that his fairness was not so
much to her but that she must seek to the foulness of one worser than he in all ways; wherefore
his rest departed from him, whereas he hated her for her untruth and her hatred of him; yet would
the sound of her voice, as she came and went in the house, make his heart beat; and the sight of
her stirred desire within him, so that he longed for her to be sweet and kind with him, and
deemed that, might it be so, he should forget all the evil gone by. But it was not so; for ever
when she saw him, her face changed, and her hatred of him became manifest, and howsoever she
were sweet with others, with him she was hard and sour.


So this went on a while till the chambers of his fatherтАЩs house, yea the very streets of the city,
became loathsome to him; and yet he called to mind that the world was wide and he but a young
man. So on a day as he sat with his father alone, he spake to him and said: тАЬFather, I was on the
quays even now, and I looked on the ships that were nigh boun, and thy sign I saw on a tall ship
that seemed to me nighest boun. Will it be long ere she sail?тАЭ



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