"Herbert George Wells. When the Sleeper Wakes" - читать интересную книгу автора

"Look at these rocks!" cried the seated man with a sudden force of gesture.
"Look at that sea that has shone and quivered there for ever! See the white
spume rush into darkness under that great cliff. And this blue vault, with
the blinding sun pouring from the dome of it. It is your world. You accept
it, you rejoice in it. It warms and supports and delights you. And for me-"

He turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes and
bloodless lips. He spoke almost in a whisper. "It is the garment of my
misery. The whole world . . . is the garment of my misery."

Isbister looked at all the wild beauty of the sunlit cliffs about them and
back to that face of despair For a moment he was silent.

He started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. "You get a night's
sleep," he said, "and you won't see much misery out here. Take my word for
it."

He was quite sure now that this was a providential encounter. Only half an
hour ago he had been feeling horribly bored. Here was employment the bare
thought of which was righteous self-applause. He took possession forthwith.
It seemed to him that the first need of this exhausted being was
companionship He flung himself down on the steeply sloping turf beside the
motionless seated figure, and deployed forthwith into a skirmishing line of
gossip.

His hearer seemed to have lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally seaward,
and spoke only in answer to Isbister's direct questions-and not to all of
those But he made no sign of objection to this benevolent intrusion upon
his despair.

In a helpless way he seemed even grateful, and when presently Isbister,
feeling that his unsupported talk was losing vigour, suggested that they
should reascend the steep and return towards Boscastle, alleging the view
into Blackapit, he submitted quietly. Halfway up he began talking to
himself, and abruptly turned a ghastly face on his helper. "What can be
happening?" he asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. "What can be
happening? Spin, spin, spin, spin. It goes round and round, round and round
for evermore."

He stood with his hand circling

"It's all right, old chap," said Isbister with the air of an old friend.
"Don't worry yourself. Trust to me."

The man dropped his hand and turned again. They went over the brow in
single file and to the headland beyond Penally, with the sleepless man
gesticulating ever and again, and speaking fragmentary things concerning
his whirling brain. At the headland they stood for a space by the seat that
looks into the dark mysteries of Blackapit, and then he sat down. Isbister