Читать «Cup of Gold (Золотая чаша)» онлайн - страница 102

"Can you understand that, Captain? Do you see that as I saw it? And does it mean anything at all to you?" Her eyes were on fire.

"I walked back to Cordova, and my feet were torn. I did penance until my body was torn, but I could not drive out all the devil. I was exorcised, but the devil was deep in me. Can you understand that, Captain?" She looked into Henry's face and saw that he had not been listening. She stood beside him and moved her fingers in his graying hair.

"You are changed," she said. "Some light is gone out of you. What fear has fallen on you?"

He stirred from his reverie.

"I do not know."

"I was told that you killed your friend. Is it that which burdens you?"

"I killed him."

"And do you mourn for him?"

"Perhaps. I do not know. I think I mourn for some other thing which is dead. He might have been a vital half of me, which, dying, leaves me half a man. Today I have been like a bound slave on a white slab of marble with the gathered vivisectors about me. I was supposed to be a healthy slave, but the scalpels found me sick with a disease called mediocrity."

"I am sorry," she said.

"You are sorry? Why are you sorry?"

"I think I am sorry because of your lost light, because the brave, brutal child in you is dead-the boastful child who mocked and thought his mockery shook the throne of God; the confident child who graciously permitted the world to accompany him through space. This child is dead, and I am sorry. I would go with you, now, if I thought it possible to warm the child to life again."

Henry said, "It is strange. Two days ago I planned to tear a continent out of the set order and crown it with a capital of gold for you. In my mind, I built up an empire for you, and planned the diadem you should wear. And now I dimly remember the person who thought these things. He is an enigmatic stranger on a staggering globe.

"And you-I feel only a slight uneasiness with you. I am not afraid of you any more. I do not want you any more. I am filled with a nostalgia for my own black mountains and for the speech of my own people.

I am drawn to sit in a deep veranda and to hear the talk of an old man I used to know. I find I am tired of all this bloodshed and struggle for things that will not lie still, for articles that will not retain their value in my hands. it is horrible," he cried. "I do not want anything any more. I have no lusts, and my desires are dry and rattling. I have only a vague wish for peace and the time to ponder imponderable matters."

"You will take no more cups of gold," she said. "You will turn no more vain dreams into unsatisfactory conquests.

I am sorry for you, Captain Morgan. And you were not right about the slave. Ill he was, indeed, but not with the illness you have mentioned. But I suppose your sins are great. All men who break the bars of mediocrity commit frightful sins. I shall pray for you to the Holy Virgin, and She will intercede for you at the throne of Heaven. But what am I to do?"

"You will go back to your husband, I suppose."