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

"If I could have a cup of tea!" he said.

Then he perceived with surprise that he had not thought of
praying. What should he say? To what could he pray?

He tried not to think of that whizzing Triangle, that seemed
now to be nailed like a Catherine wheel to the very centre of his
forehead, and yet at the same time to be at the apex of the
universe. Against that--for protection against that--he was
praying. It was by a great effort that at last he pronounced the
words:

"Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord ...."

Presently be had turned up his light, and was prowling about
the room. The clear inky dinginess that comes before the raw dawn
of a spring morning, found his white face at the window, looking
out upon the great terrace and the park.




CHAPTER THE SECOND - THE WEAR AND TEAR OF EPISCOPACY

(1)


IT was only in the last few years that the bishop had
experienced these nervous and mental crises. He was a belated
doubter. Whatever questionings had marked his intellectual
adolescence had either been very slight or had been too
adequately answered to leave any serious scars upon his
convictions.

And even now he felt that he was afflicted physically rather
than mentally, that some protective padding of nerve-sheath or
brain-case had worn thin and weak, and left him a prey to strange
disturbances, rather than that any new process of thought was
eating into his mind. These doubts in his mind were still not
really doubts; they were rather alien and, for the first time,
uncontrolled movements of his intelligence. He had had a
sheltered upbringing; he was the well-connected son of a
comfortable rectory, the only son and sole survivor of a family
of three; he had been carefully instructed and he had been a
willing learner; it had been easy and natural to take many things
for granted. It had been very easy and pleasant for him to take
the world as he found it and God as he found Him. Indeed for all
his years up to manhood he had been able to take life exactly as
in his infancy he took his carefully warmed and prepared bottle