"GL4" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol12)

late as 1968; and since the passage roughed out here would follow on
from the point reached in the typescript C (see note 14) it seems very
likely that C dates from that time.
Such as the evidence is, then, the original work (represented by the
manuscript A and the typescript B) derives from the 1950s. In a letter
of 13 May 1964 (Letters no.256) he wrote:
I did begin a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall [of
Sauron], but it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are
dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with
the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety
with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice
and prosperity, would become discontented and restless - while the
dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and
governors - like Denethor or worse. I found that even so early there
was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret
Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being
Orcs and going round doing damage. I could have written a 'thriller'
about the plot and its discovery and overthrow - but it would be
just that. Not worth doing.
From the evidence given above, however, it is seen that his interest in
the story was subsequently reawakened, and even reached the point
of making a new (though incomplete) version of what he had written
of it years before. But in 1972, fifteen months before his death, he
wrote to his friend Douglas Carter (Letters no.338):
I have written nothing beyond the first few years of the Fourth Age.
(Except the beginning of a tale supposed to refer to the end of
the reign of Eldarion about 100 years after the death of Aragorn.
Then I of course discovered that the King's Peace would contain
no tales worth recounting; and his wars would have little interest
after the overthrow of Sauron; but that almost certainly a restless-
ness would appear about then, owing to the (it seems) inevitable
boredom of Men with the good: there would be secret societies
practising dark cults, and 'orc-cults' among adolescents.)
To form the text that now follows I print C so far as it goes, with the
sinister young man given the name Saelon; and from that point I give
the text of B, changing the name from Arthael in B to Saelon.

THE NEW SHADOW.

This tale begins in the days of Eldarion, son of that Elessar of

whom the histories have much to tell. One hundred and five
years had passed since the fall of the Dark Tower,(7) and the story
of that time was little heeded now by most of the people of
Gondor, though a few were still living who could remember the
War of the Ring as a shadow upon their early childhood. One
of these was old Borlas of Pen-arduin. He was the younger son
of Beregond, the first Captain of the Guard of Prince Faramir,
who had removed with his lord from the City to the Emyn
Arnen.(8)