Pokrewne

Start
Charles Newman The Newman Resident (epub)
Charles Mathes [Girl 04] The Girl in the Face of the Clo
Charles Sheffield [Proteus 01 Sight of Proteus (epub)
Charles Chilton [Journey into Journey into Space (v2.0) (epub
Charlene Sands [Suite Secrets Five Star Cowboy [SD 1889] (v5
Charles Knief [John Caine 02] Sand Dollars (v5.0) (epub)
Charles McCarry [Paul Christo The Miernik Dossier (v5.0) (epu
Charles Stross [Merchant Prin The Clan Corporate (v5.0) (epub
Charles L Grant [Oxrun Statio The Last Call of Mourning (epub
Amalie Vantana [Phantom Knigh The Charleston Chase (epub)

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.”“Is it really too late?”“Now that the master is no longer here …” He tapped the panels with his stick.“I don’t know how the walls are still standing,” he said.“They may last a fair time yet.But the rain deluges through the roof and windows and loosens the stones.And then when the winter storms come! It is those violent storms that destroy everything.”He dislodged a scrap of mortar.“Just look, it’s no more than a bit of gray dust.I can’t think why the blocks don’t fall apart.The damp has destroyed everything.”“Was this the only room the master had?” she asked.“He had hundreds of them and all of them richly furnished.I’ve pushed the movable stuff into one of the smaller rooms which were less damaged.”He opened a door concealed in the paneling.“Here is some of it,” he said.She beheld a jumble of carved furniture, ornaments, carpets, and crockery.“Gold dishes, please note.The master would eat off nothing but gold.And look at this.Here he is in his robes of state.” He pointed to a canvas where the face of the statue was portrayed.The eyes were marvelously expressive.They were so even in the statue, although the sculptor had given them no pupils, but here they were infinitely more expressive and the look which they gave was one of anguish.“Is no one left near me?” they seemed to ask.And the droop of the mouth replied, “No one.” The man had known they would all forsake him, he had long foreseen it.Nevertheless, she, she had come! She had fought through the bush and she had wandered round the swamps, she had felt fatigue and despair overwhelming her, but she had triumphed over all these obstacles and she had come, she had come at last.Had he not guessed she would come? Yet possibly this very foresight had but accentuated the bitter line of his set lips.“Yes,” said those lips, “someone will come, when all the world has ceased to call.But someone who will be unable to soothe my distress.”She swung round.This reproach was becoming unbearable, and not only this reproach, which made all her goodwill seem useless, but the cry of abandonment, the wild lonely appeal in his look.“We can do nothing, nothing at all for him,” the old man declared.And she replied: “Is there ever anything we can do?” She sighed.In her innermost being she felt the anguish of this look; one might have thought it was she who cried, that the cry of loneliness welled from her own lonely heart.“Perhaps you can do something,” he said.“You are still young.Although you may not be able to do anything for yourself, you might perhaps help others.”“You know very well that I cannot even do that,” she said.She seemed overwhelmed, as though she bore the ruins on her own shoulders.“Are there still more rooms?” she asked him.“Lots of them.But it is getting late, the sun is sinking.”Daylight was fading fast.The light had become a soft, rosy glow, a light which was kinder to details, and in it the great room took on a new aspect.The paintings and panels regained a freshness which was far from theirs by right.This sudden glow was the gentlest of lights.But not even this light could calm a tormented heart.“Come along,” called the old man.“Yes,” she said.She imagined that once she went out of this hall and its adjoining storeroom her heart would perhaps calm down.She thought that perhaps she might forget the great cry coming from the storeroom.Yes, if only she could get away from this palace, leave these ruins, surely she could forget it.But was not the cry inside herself?“The cry is within me,” she exclaimed.“Stop thinking about it,” advised the old man.“If you hear anything it’s just because the silence has got on your nerves.Tomorrow you will hear nothing.”“But it is a terrible cry.”“The swans have an awful cry, too,” he remarked.“Swans?”“Yes, the swans.To look at them gliding over the water you might never believe it.Have you ever happened to hear them cry? But of course not, you are scarcely more than a child and with less sense than one, and you probably imagine that they sing.Listen, formerly there were lots of swans here, they were at the very gate of the palace.Sometimes the lake was covered with them like white blossoms.Visitors used to throw scraps to them.Once the tourists stopped coming, the swans died.No doubt they had lost the habit of searching for food themselves and so they died.Very well, never, do you hear me, never did I hear a single song coming from the pond.”“Why do you have to tell me all this? Have I ever told you I believe in the swan’s song? You didn’t need to speak to me like that.”“No, maybe I shouldn’t have said it, or I should have said it less suddenly at least.I’m sorry.I even believed in the swan’s song myself once.You know how it is, I am old and lonely and I have got into the habit of talking to myself.I was talking to myself, then.I once believed that the lord of this palace, before he died, sang a swan’s song.But no, he cried out.He cried so loudly that …”“Please tell me no more,” she begged.“All right, I suppose we shouldn’t think about all that.But let’s go.”He carefully closed the storeroom door and they made their way toward the exit.“Did you mean to leave the door of the big room open?” she asked, once they had reached the landing.“It hasn’t been shut for a long time,” he replied.“Besides, there is nothing to fear.No one comes here now.”“But I came.”He glanced at her.“I keep wondering why you came,” he said.“Why did you?”“How can I tell?” she said.Her visit was futile.She had crossed a desert of trees, and bush and swamps.And why? Had she come at the summoning of that anguished cry from the depth of the statue’s and the picture’s eyes? What way was there of finding out? And moreover it was an appeal to which she could not respond, an appeal beyond her power to satisfy.No, this impulse which had moved her to hasten toward the town had been mad from the start.“I don’t know why I came,” she repeated.“You shouldn’t take things to heart like that.These painters and carvers are so crafty, you know, they can make you realize things you would never have considered.Take that statue and the portrait, for instance.Have you noticed the look in the eyes? We begin by wondering where they found such a look and eventually we realize they have taken it from ourselves; and these are the paradoxes they would be the first to laugh at.You should laugh, too.”“But these paradoxes, as you call them, which come from the depth of our being, what if we cannot find them there?”“What do you find within yourself?” he answered her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]