"Dunsany, Lord - Why The Milkman Shudders When He Perceives The Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

Why the Milkman Shudders
When He Perceives the Dawn

by Lord Dunsany




In the Hall of the Ancient Company of Milkmen round the
great fireplace at the end, when the winter logs are burning
and all the craft are assembled they tell to-day, as their
grandfathers told before them, why the milkman shudders when
he perceives the dawn.
When dawn comes creeping over the edges of hills, peers
through the tree-trunks making wonderful shadows, touches
the tops of tall columns of smoke going up from awakening
cottages in the valleys, and breaks all golden over Kentish
fields, when going on tip-toe thence it comes to the walls
of London and slips all shyly up those gloomy streets the
milkman perceives it and shudders.
A man may be a Milkman's Working Apprentice, may know
what borax is and how to mix it, yet not for that is the
story told to him. There are five men alone that tell that
story, five men appointed by the Master of the Company, by
whom each place is filled as it falls vacant, and if you do
not hear it from one of them you hear the story from no one
and so can never know why the milkman shudders when he
perceives the dawn.
It is the way of one of these five men, greybeards all
and milkmen from infancy, to rub his hands by the fire when
the great logs burn, and to settle himself more easily in
his chair, perhaps to sip some drink far other than milk,
then to look round to see that none are there to whom it
would not be fitting the tale should be told and, looking
from face to face and seeing none but the men of the Ancient
Company, and questioning mutely the rest of the five with
his eyes, if some of the five be there, and receiving their
permission, to cough and to tell the tale. And a great hush
falls in the Hall of the Ancient Company, and something
about the shape of the roof and the rafters makes the tale
resonant all down the hall so that the youngest hears it far
away from the fire and knows, and dreams of the day when
perhaps he will tell himself why the milkman shudders when
he perceives the dawn.
Not as one tells some casual fact is it told, nor is it
commented on from man to man, but it is told by that great
fire only and when the occasion and the stillness of the
room and the merit of the wine and the profit of all seem to
warrant it in the opinion of the five deputed men: then does