Читать книгу At the Sign of the Fox. A Romance онлайн

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“‘One looked into the cup of life,

And let his shadow fall athwart;

The wine gleamed darkly in the cup—

It surely was of bitter sort.’”

Stead withdrew his gaze from the river and turned it on the face of his companion.

“I know it all, doctor, and much more than you can say. I know you’ve clung to me when no one else would trouble, and that you drive all those forty miles from home every autumn, rain or shine, to tramp the woods with me, to sit beside my fire and give me comfort, and yet—— Do you remember the old adage, that ‘Life without work is water in a sieve’? but in the antiphon lies the sting, ‘Work without motive cannot live.’ It is motive that is dead in me. I think I have forgiven, I delude myself if I say I have forgotten, but, good God, doctor, can you imagine sitting and feeling yourself as useless as water in a sieve and not caring? That is my misery. If I could only really care, heart and soul, for anything for one short month, I would give the rest of my life for it.

“I have not even the primal motive of hunger that sets the wolf a-prowling. The few yearly thousands my father left me have put that chance away, and my contempt for that form of cowardice precludes suicide. So I have actually come to be what passes current for content, with every one but you. Here I am, located for life on the hillside, with only half-breed José left of what was, with my books, which can neither dissemble nor betray, for company, and so long as I have food I shall have dog friends to follow me by day and sleep by me at night. Then, as long as eyesight lasts, there is my River Kingdom,” and Stead stretched his arms, half to relax their tension, toward the silver fillet shimmering in the valley below, in which at that moment some white gulls, with black-tipped wings, hanging in the skylike clouds, were mirrored.