"ElizabethGaskell-TheHalfBrothers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gaskell Elizabeth C)

everything was so still that I thought I should have plenty of time
to get home before the snow came down. Off I set at a pretty quick
pace. But night came on quicker. The right path was clear enough in
the day-time, although at several points two or three exactly similar
diverged from the same place; but when there was a good light, the
traveller was guided by the sight of distant objects,--a piece of
rock,--a fall in the ground--which were quite invisible to me now. I
plucked up a brave heart, however, and took what seemed to me the
right road. It was wrong, nevertheless, and led me whither I knew
not, but to some wild boggy moor where the solitude seemed painful,
intense, as if never footfall of man had come thither to break the
silence. I tried to shout--with the dimmest possible hope of being
heard--rather to reassure myself by the sound of my own voice; but my
voice came husky and short, and yet it dismayed me; it seemed so
weird and strange, in that noiseless expanse of black darkness.
Suddenly the air was filled thick with dusky flakes, my face and
hands were wet with snow. It cut me off from the slightest knowledge
of where I was, for I lost every idea of the direction from which I
had come, so that I could not even retrace my steps; it hemmed me in,
thicker, thicker, with a darkness that might be felt. The boggy soil
on which I stood quaked under me if I remained long in one place, and
yet I dared not move far. All my youthful hardiness seemed to leave
me at once. I was on the point of crying, and only very shame seemed
to keep it down. To save myself from shedding tears, I shouted--
terrible, wild shouts for bare life they were. I turned sick as I
paused to listen; no answering sound came but the unfeeling echoes.
Only the noiseless, pitiless snow kept falling thicker, thicker--
faster, faster! I was growing numb and sleepy. I tried to move
about, but I dared not go far, for fear of the precipices which, I
knew, abounded in certain places on the Fells. Now and then, I stood
still and shouted again; but my voice was getting choked with tears,
as I thought of the desolate helpless death I was to die, and how
little they at home, sitting round the warm, red, bright fire, wotted
what was become of me,--and how my poor father would grieve for me--
it would surely kill him--it would break his heart, poor old man!
Aunt Fanny too--was this to be the end of all her cares for me? I
began to review my life in a strange kind of vivid dream, in which
the various scenes of my few boyish years passed before me like
visions. In a pang of agony, caused by such remembrance of my short
life, I gathered up my strength and called out once more, a long,
despairing, wailing cry, to which I had no hope of obtaining any
answer, save from the echoes around, dulled as the sound might be by
the thickened air. To my surprise I heard a cry--almost as long, as
wild as mine--so wild that it seemed unearthly, and I almost thought
it must be the voice of some of the mocking spirits of the Fells,
about whom I had heard so many tales. My heart suddenly began to
beat fast and loud. I could not reply for a minute or two. I nearly
fancied I had lost the power of utterance. Just at this moment a dog
barked. Was it Lassie's bark--my brother's collie?--an ugly enough
brute, with a white, ill-looking face, that my father always kicked