"Lord Dunsany - The Bird Of The Difficult Eye (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

Now a certain money-lender ofCheapsidewho had just been
made a peer had divided his gains into three equal parts;
one for the purchase of the peerage, country-house and park,
and the twenty thousand pheasants that are absolutely
essential, and one for the upkeep of the position, while the
third he banked abroad, partly to cheat the native
tax-gatherer and partly because it seemed to him that the
days of the Peerage were few and that he might at any moment
be called upon to start afresh elsewhere. In the upkeep of
the position he included jewelry for his wife and so it came
about that Lord Castlenorman placed an order with two
well-known Bond-street jewellers named Messrs. Grosvenor and
Campbellto the extent of 100,000 pounds for a few reliable
emeralds.
But the emeralds in stock were mostly small and
shop-soiled and Neepy Thang had to set out at once before he
had had as much as a week inLondon. I will briefly sketch
his project. Not many knew it, for where the form of
business is blackmail the fewer creditors you have the
better (which of course in various degrees applies at all
times).
On the shores of the risky seas of Shiroora Shan grows
one tree only so that upon its branches if anywhere in the
world there must build its nest the Bird of the Difficult
Eye. Neepy Thang had come by this information, which was
indeed the truth, that if the bird migrated to Fairyland
before the three eggs hatched out they would undoubtedly all
turn into emeralds, while if they hatched out first it would
be a bad business.
When he had mentioned these eggs to Messrs. Grosvenor and
Campbellthey had said, "The very thing": they were men of
few words, in English, for it was not their native tongue.
So Neepy Thang set out. He bought the purple ticket at
Victoria Station. He went by Herne Hill, Bromley and
Bickley and passed St. Mary Cray. At Eynsford he changed
and taking a footpath along a winding valley went wandering
into the hills. And at the top of a hill in a little wood,
where all the anemones long since were over and the perfume
of mint and thyme from outside came drifting in with Thang,
he found once more the familiar path, age-old and fair as
wonder, that leads to the Edge of the World. Little to him
were its sacred memories that are one with the secret of
earth, for he was on business, and little would they be to
me if I ever put them on paper. Let it suffice that he went
down that path going further and further from the fields we
know, and all the way he muttered to himself, "What if the
eggs hatch out and it be a bad business!" The glamour that
is at all times upon those lonely lands that lie at the back
of the chalky hills ofKentintensified as he went upon his
journeys. Queerer and queerer grew the things that he saw