"Russell,.Sean.-.Darkness.1.-.Beneath.the.Vaunted.Hills.e-txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russo Richard Paul)

". . . for many of the worthies of Avonel. But for a young man such as yourself . . ." She smiled knowingly.
Erasmus was thirty-not so young by the standards of Farrland-and was, despite his name, no longer easy prey to flattery.
Up a broad flight of stairs and finally into the most eccentric library Erasmus had ever seen. It belonged in an ancient abbey or college for studies in the arcane. The room was polished oak from the floor to the very top of the shelves-some two stories up-and was all nooks and alcoves and stairways and carrels. Balconies were suspended precariously overhead, backed by cliffs of books. Sliding ladders, at odd angles to everything else, ran up to bronze railings.
People stood on these ladders, surveying the crowd or holding forth to groups who gathered about their feet.
Erasmus realized that Mrs. Trocket had left him alone. Perhaps she had even bid him farewell.
The room was crowded with people, and there was such a hum of conversation that he thought of his beehives in far-off Locfal. It was, to Erasmus' eye, a typical gathering of the educated classes of Avonel, though to one well-versed in such things, it might have been a more fashionable group than was common. Erasmus did not much care for such distinctions.
He noticed that everyone seemed a bit more animated than usual, as though they were trying to hide their discomfort, or perhaps they were merely thrilled to find themselves in such a place, for certainly none of the ladies had been in a brothel before. Many of the men looked distinctly uncomfortable, and Erasmus was sure it wasn't because this was their first visit-but they had unquestionably never been here in the company of their wives. They were likely terrified that some young woman was going to recognize them, though Erasmus knew that the able Mrs. Trocket would have advised her young ladies beforehand. Still, it was good sport to watch the husbands shying like nervous foals.
Scattered among the people attending the party were both servants and working girls and they talked and laughed with the guests and plied them with spirits and delicacies. The atmosphere here, in the center of the Marchioness' circle, was less bawdy and brazen than Erasmus had seen in the other chambers. Passions were well under control where one's reputation could actually suffer some damage. After all, the usual code-that one did not speak of who or what one saw in a brothel-would not be in effect this night. People would likely talk of nothing else for days.
Erasmus began searching the room for familiar faces, and though there were many that he knew by sight, he couldn't find anyone he thought might offer interesting conversation, and he saw several he knew for a fact had never said an intriguing thing in their lives. He thought the rather intense-looking man across the room seemed vaguely familiar, and then realized that it was his own face in a looking glass, and this made him laugh.
Well, he certainly won't have anything to say that I haven't heard before, Erasmus thought.
He backed up against the wall of books, and thinking he would keep people at bay if he were engaged in some activity, he took a volume from the shelf and opened it. In two lines he realized that it was erotic fiction, and returned it to the shelf. What pleasure could such an activity provide if one could indulge it openly? All the books he could see were of the same variety, so he turned back to the gathering.
"Isn't it divinely wicked?" a young woman said to him, and he realized he was looking at a daughter of the Shackleton family, though his memory would not cooperate by supplying a name. She waved a glass of wine expansively, the look of drunken delight not varying measurably. "Only the marchioness would dare such an evening." She looked at him suddenly, her manner inquisitive if a little unfocused. "Don't I know you?"
"Erasmus Flattery," he said, and watched her expression change from drunken delight.
"Really?" she managed, remaining fairly collected. "You've been to our home, I think."
Erasmus nodded.
"I so wanted to ask if the rumors were true, but I was too shy, and my mother warned me to mind my manners. But tonight I've had enough wine . . . Is it true you served Eldrich?"
He shook his head. "Vicious rumor. I once visited a school chum at Lord Eldrich's home-he was a great-nephew or some such thing. But it was all very ordinary, and the legendary Eldrich never appeared. Not even to my school chum, if he's to be believed."
"Too bad," she said, her look of delight fading a little more. "Too many good stories end up that way. The truth is a bit of a bore, isn't it?"
Erasmus shrugged.
"Well, that's what I've found anyway," she said resignedly, placed a hand on his chest rather clumsily, then backed away into the crowd, waving theatrically, as though she had lost all capacity for the unselfconscious gesture.
Dora, Erasmus thought as he watched her disappear into the crowd. Dora Shackleton, although "Simpleton" might be more appropriate.
Nearby a gathering of people swayed and bobbed, all trying to view the object of interest that lay at the very center of this movement. Drawn by what force Erasmus did not know-perhaps merely because the audience was almost entirely young ladies-he found himself looking over the heads of the watchers. Heads of lustrous swaying hair that fell to bare shoulders and beyond.
"But you see she is completely relaxed," a man was saying. "In fact, she will wake from this refreshed, as though she had slept the night through and experienced only the sweetest of dreams."
The man bent over a young woman seated in a chair. He sported both an ostentatious mustache and a monocle and looked too much like a player on the stage-the foreign count whom no one trusted, despite his charm. He laid a hand on the young woman's shoulder, but she did not stir, and kept her eyes closed. Indeed, she seemed to be asleep sitting up.
"But what will she do?" a woman asked, a little embarrassed by her question.
"Or not do," another added, and they all giggled at her boldness.
"Clara will do nothing in her present state that she would find objectionable while awake. She is mesmerized, but her morals are perfectly awake, let me assure you."
"Can you cure illnesses, then?" someone asked. "Some make such a claim."
"Some illnesses, yes. I have had encouraging results treating nervous dyspepsia, insomnia, dropsy, and brain fevers, to name but a few. Consumption, I regret to say, it will not affect, though it will take away some discomfort from the consumptive patient. Irrational fears I have treated with great success. Recurrent nightmares I have solved utterly."
"Can people really remember back to their very childhood, Doctor? To their birth, even?"
"I have seen long-lost memories surface, often, but I cannot claim perfect success. I treated the great Lord Skye, who as you know can remember nothing that took place before his childhood accident, but we were unable to recover his past. It is lost, I believe. Lost when he suffered his terrible injury."
"But his intellect was not affected . . . ?"
"Only his speech, slightly. But otherwise we do not know. Perhaps if he had not suffered his tragedy, he would have shown even greater genius. But what is a memory? Can it be weighed or measured? If one is forgotten, does the brain weight less? How is it that we hold so many in our minds? And where are they kept?" He looked around at the gathering as though expecting answers, but when none were forthcoming, he continued. "There are those who claim the mind and the brain are not one and the same, but clearly when the brain is injured, so also is the mind. Thus Skye lost his memories-as though they were destroyed when his brain was damaged. But in an undamaged brain I believe the memories are never truly lost, but only misplaced. Memories of every event and smell and taste and emotion, all there, like perfect novels in infinite numbers. The novels of our lives. It is one of the mysteries that empiricism has yet to explain." He turned to the sleeping woman. "But let us see what Clara can remember. Perhaps she has some memories long forgotten. Clara? I want you to turn your mind to your childhood . . . Your very earliest memory."
Erasmus drifted away. He had seen such displays before. Fascinating the first time or two, but largely quackery, he thought. This man had made more modest claims than most, who were milking the ignorant for their hard-earned coin with promises to cure all manner of illness and deformity, and much more. Which only made this man slightly less of a charlatan.
But what is memory?
Perhaps not an entirely foolish question, Erasmus thought, but he was more interested in knowing why one could not forget. Or how one could forget. For that he would hand over his own money, and gladly.
A young woman offered him a glass of champagne. She was wearing nothing but lingerie of black lace, sheer black stockings, and an astonishing tumble of dark curls.
"You look, sir, as though you might require some help erasing that troubled expression from your brow," she said in a lovely warm voice. Erasmus was usually easy prey for a beautiful voice.
"I cultivate looking troubled," he answered. "It keeps people at a distance."
"Ah," she said, stepping aside to let people pass and pressing herself softly against him. "Are you trying to keep me at a distance then?"
"It's very likely, I fear." Erasmus glanced around the room. "I'm looking for friends, actually."
"Do they have names?" she asked, speaking near to his ear in a tone so intimate that Erasmus could hardly help but respond.
Erasmus hesitated. "I believe so, though they've never told them to me."
This caused her to pause for a moment, then she laughed.
"Ras! Short for rascal, I see," came a voice from behind. Erasmus felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find Barton, an old classmate from his Merton days. "Come out for an evening of wickedness, I see?" The man was beaming at him a bit foolishly, as though overcome with delight at finding Erasmus Flattery in a brothel, of all places.
"I was invited by the marchioness," Erasmus said, not quite sure why he was trying to explain his presence.
"Oh, to be sure! As were we all." Barton laughed. "But have you seen the contortionists? Well, I tell you, it will fire your imagination. Possibilities undreamed of!" He laughed again, and snatched a glass from a passing tray. Barton's face was red, even his now completely bald pate was flushed. "You look a bit out of sorts, Ras," he said sympathetically, and then suddenly looked a little self-conscious himself, as though afraid he'd been caught in the act of frivolity. "I hear you're setting your stamp on the Society. Making quite a name for yourself," he offered, perhaps searching for some topic that would put Erasmus at ease.
It was not a good choice-Erasmus did not like to be patronized. He nodded distractedly, and the woman who still held his arm pressed against him again, calling for his attention.
Barton smiled and drained his glass. "Well, mustn't keep you from your friend," he said, nodded to the woman on Erasmus' arm and turned to go.
"But, Barton . . ." but Barton was gone.