"Mary Stewart - Rose Cottage [txt]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

where the bog water gathers in dark brown pools, to soak away gently
towards the river that winds along the base of the strath.

Strathbeg, the valley is called on the maps, the small glen. To its
few inhabitants it is just "the glen", and the big house, Strathbeg
Lodge, to be glimpsed among its sheltering trees some way below, is
simply "the House". Built originally as a shooting-lodge, it has

belonged for some years to the Brandons, who used to come here each
year in summer from their home in the north of England. From a
distance the Lodge is imposing, with its baronial turreting and stepped
roofing, its well-grown timber and its lawns reaching to the river with
its series of salmon pools, but from nearer can be seen the signs of
the neglect enforced by the recent war; the woodwork could do with a
coat of paint, the rhones all too obviously need to be cleaned out, the
lawns are no longer lawns, but pastures cropped by sheep. It is still
not possible, two years after the end of the war, to find the labour
and the materials necessary to restore the place to good order, but the
family make the best of it, and the best, in fact, is very pleasant.
After the traumas and shortages of the war years the glen is a haven of
peace, and a steady supply of milk, eggs, fish, mutton and venison goes
a long way to make up for threadbare carpets and unmended pipes and the
eccentricities of the plumbing.

The family, what is left of it, came here to stay in 1940, when their
English home was requisitioned by the RAF. Lady Brandon settled in
with her married daughter and the daughter's two children. Sir James
spent his war in London, only travelling north for brief leaves. The
son, Gilbert, who was unmarried, was killed at El Alamein. Now that
the war is over the son-in-law. Major Drew, is home, and taking over
on behalf of his own small son, William, who is the heir. Sir James is
home, too, but feels his age these days he is well into his sixties and
the family seems to have settled happily enough into the quiet glen.
Tod Hall, their home in England, having housed a series of
high-spirited airmen dedicated to living the brief span of their doomed
young lives to the full, has suffered so much damage that Sir James,
without too much regret,

has decided to use the compensatory cash to turn it into an hotel, and
himself retire for good into the peace of Strathbeg. A peace which, at
this moment, one could believe never to have been broken.

The burn, lapsing in whispers, is, apart from the bees, the only sound
in the day. Both are drowned in the sudden hear ye, hear ye
preliminary whistle of a curlew, and then the sky is filled, it seems,
with the beautiful long, liquid call that is perhaps the loveliest, the
most thrilling of all birds" songs.

"The silver chain of sound" was how George Meredith described the
lark's singing, and poet after poet has added praise to the