"Wells, H G - Soul Of A Bishop" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

Oh! Why had he made it?

(3)


Sleep had gone.

The awakened sleeper groaned, sat up in the darkness, and felt
gropingly in this unaccustomed bed and bedroom first for the edge
of the bed and then for the electric light that was possibly on
the little bedside table.

The searching hand touched something. A water-bottle. The hand
resumed its exploration. Here was something metallic and smooth,
a stem. Either above or below there must be a switch....

The switch was found, grasped, and turned.

The darkness fled.

In a mirror the sleeper saw the reflection of his face and a
corner of the bed in which he lay. The lamp had a tilted shade
that threw a slanting bar of shadow across the field of
reflection, lighting a right-angled triangle very brightly and
leaving the rest obscure. The bed was a very great one, a bed for
the Anakim. It had a canopy with yellow silk curtains, surmounted
by a gilded crown of carved wood. Between the curtains was a
man's face, clean-shaven, pale, with disordered brown hair and
weary, pale-blue eyes. He was clad in purple pyjamas, and the
hand that now ran its fingers through the brown hair was long and
lean and shapely.

Beside the bed was a convenient little table bearing the light,
a water-bottle and glass, a bunch of keys, a congested pocket-
book, a gold-banded fountain pen, and a gold watch that indicated
a quarter past three. On the lower edge of the picture in the
mirror appeared the back of a gilt chair, over which a garment of
peculiar construction had been carelessly thrown. It was in the
form of that sleeveless cassock of purple, opening at the side,
whose lower flap is called a bishop's apron; the corner of the
frogged coat showed behind the chair-back, and the sash lay
crumpled on the floor. Black doeskin breeches, still warmly lined
with their pants, lay where they had been thrust off at the
corner of the bed, partly covering black hose and silver-buckled
shoes.

For a moment the tired gaze of the man in the bed rested upon
these evidences of his episcopal dignity. Then he turned from
them to the watch at the bedside.