George Orwell Folwark zwierzęcy (12)
George Orwell Folwark zwierzęcy (16)
George Orwell Folwark zwierzęcy (18)
George Orwell Folwark zwierzęcy (13)
George Orwell Folwark zwierzęcy (17)
Yeffeth Glenn Wybierz Czerwona Pigulke
Siódmy Papirus
Krzywa Sweetmana
Zjawa
473 08
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.Mrs.Wilson told me that she had caught cold, and was confinedto her room.So I was ill at ease, not from love alone, but from anxiety aswell.Every night I crept up through the deserted house to the stair where shehad vanished, and there sat in the darkness or groped and peered about for somesign.But I saw no light even, and did not know where her room was.It might befar beyond this extremity of my knowledge; for I discovered no indication of theproximity of the inhabited portion of the house.Mrs.Wilson said there wasnothing serious the matter; but this did not satisfy me, for I imaginedsomething mysterious in the way in which she spoke.As the days went on, and she did not appear, my soul began to droop within me;my intellect seemed about to desert me altogether.In vain I tried to read.Nothing could fix my attention.I read and re-read the same page; but although Iunderstood every word as I read, I found when I came to a pause, that therelingered in my mind no palest notion of the idea.It was just what oneexperiences in attempting to read when half-asleep.I tried Euclid, and fared a little better with that.But having now to initiatemy boys into the mysteries of equations, I soon found that although I couldmanage a very simple one, yet when I attempted one more complex-one in whichsomething bordering upon imagination was necessary to find out the object forwhich to appoint the symbol to handle it by-the necessary power of concentrationwas itself a missing factor.But although my thoughts were thus beyond my control, my duties were notaltogether irksome to me.I remembered that they kept me near her; and althoughI could not learn, I found that I could teach a little.Perhaps it is foolish to dwell upon an individual variety of an almost universalstage in the fever of life; but one exception to these indications of mentalparalysis I think worth mentioning.I continued my work in the library, although it did not advance with the samesteadiness as before.One day, in listless mood, I took up a volume, withoutknowing what it was, or what I sought.It opened at the Amoretti of EdmundSpenser.I was on the point of closing it again, when a line caught my eye.Iread the sonnet; read another; found I could understand them perfectly; and thathour the poetry of the sixteenth century, hitherto a sealed fountain, became anopen well of refreshment, and the strength that comes form sympathy.What if itssecond-rate writers were full of conceits and vagaries, the feelings are veryindifferent to the mere intellectual forms around which the same feelings inothers have gathered, if only by their means they hint at, and sometimes expressthemselves.Now I understood this old fantastic verse, and knew that thefoam-bells on the torrent of passionate feeling are iris-hued.And what wasmore-it proved an intellectual nexus between my love and my studies, or at leasta bridge by which I could pass from the one to the other.That same day, I remember well, Mrs.Wilson told me that Lady Alice was muchbetter.But as days passed, and still she did not make her appearance, myanxiety only changed its object, and I feared that it was from aversion to methat she did not join the family.But her name was never mentioned in my hearingby any of the other members of it; and her absence appeared to be to them amatter of no moment or interest.One night, as I sat in my room, I found, as usual, that it was impossible toread; and throwing the book aside, relapsed into that sphere of thought whichnow filled my soul, and had for its centre the Lady Alice.I recalled her formas she lay on the couch, and brooded over the remembrance till a longing to seeher, almost unbearable, arose within me."Would to heaven," I said to myself, "that will were power!"In this concurrence of idleness, distraction, and vehement desire, I found allat once, without any foregone resolution, that I was concentrating andintensifying within me, until it rose almost to a command, the operativevolition that Lady Alice should come to me.In a moment more I trembled at thesense of a new power which sprang into conscious being within me.I had had noprevision of its existence, when I gave way to such extravagant and apparentlyhelpless wishes.I now actually awaited the fulfilment of my desire; but in acondition ill-fitted to receive it, for the effort had already exhausted me tosuch a degree, that every nerve was in a conscious tremor.Nor had I long towait.I heard no sound of approach: the closet-door folded back, and in glided,open-eyed, but sightless pale as death, and clad in white, ghostly-pure andsaint-like, the Lady Alice.I shuddered from head to foot at what I had done.She was more terrible to me in that moment than any pale-eyed ghost could havebeen.For had I not exercised a kind of necromantic art, and roused withoutawaking the slumbering dead? She passed me, walking round the table at which Iwas seated, went to the couch, laid herself down with a maidenly care, turned alittle on one side, with her face towards me, and gradually closed her eyes.Insomething deeper than sleep she lay, and yet not in death.I rose, and once moreknelt beside her, but dared not touch her.In what far realms of life might thelovely soul be straying! What mysterious modes of being might now be the homelysurroundings of her second life! Thoughts unutterable rose in me, culminated,and sank, like the stars of heaven, as I gazed on the present symbol of anabsent life-a life that I loved by means of the symbol; a symbol that I lovedbecause of the life.How long she lay thus, how long I gazed upon her thus, I donot know.Gradually, but without my being able to distinguish the gradations,her countenance altered to that of one who sleeps.But the change did not endthere.A colour, faint as the blush in the centre of a white rose, tinged herlips, and deepened; then her cheek began to share in the hue, then her brow andher neck.The colour was that of the cloud which, the farthest from the sunset,yet acknowledges the rosy atmosphere.I watched, as it were, the dawn of a soulon the horizon of the visible.The first approaches of its far-off flight weremanifest; and as I watched, I saw it come nearer and nearer, till its great,silent, speeding pinions were folded, and it looked forth, a calm, beautiful,infinite woman, from the face and form sleeping before me.I knew that she was awake, some moments before she opened her eyes.When at lastthose depths of darkness disclosed themselves, slowly uplifting their whitecloudy portals, the same consternation she had formerly manifested, accompaniedby yet greater anger, followed."Yet again! Am I your slave, because I am weak?" She rose in the majesty ofwrath, and moved towards the door."Lady Alice, I have not touched you.I am to blame, but not as you think.CouldI help longing to see you? And if the longing passed, ere I was aware, into awill that you should come, and you obeyed it, forgive me."I hid my face in my hands, overcome by conflicting emotions.A kind of stuporcame over me [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
