"Haggard, H Rider- She" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haggard H. Rider)

detail seems to be graven on the memory in such fashion that we cannot
forget it, and so it is with the scene that I am about to describe. It
rises as clearly before my mind at this moment as thought it had
happened but yesterday.

It was in this very month something over twenty years ago that I,
Ludwig Horace Holly, was sitting one night in my rooms at Cambridge,
grinding away at some mathematical work, I forget what. I was to go up
for my fellowship within a week, and was expected by my tutor and my
college generally to distinguish myself. At last, wearied out, I flung
my book down, and, going to the mantelpiece, took down a pipe and
filled it. There was a candle burning on the mantelpiece, and a long,
narrow glass at the back of it; and as I was in the act of lighting
the pipe I caught sight of my own countenance in the glass, and paused
to reflect. The lighted match burnt away till it scorched my fingers,
forcing me to drop it; but still I stood and stared at myself in the
glass, and reflected.

"Well," I said aloud, at last, "it is to be hoped that I shall be able
to do something with the inside of my head, for I shall certainly
never do anything by the help of the outside."

This remark will doubtless strike anybody who reads it as being
slightly obscure, but I was in reality alluding to my physical
deficiencies. Most men of twenty-two are endowed at any rate with some
share of the comeliness of youth, but to me even this was denied.
Short, thick-set, and deep-chested almost to deformity, with long
sinewy arms, heavy features, deep-set grey eyes, a low brow half
overgrown with a mop of thick black hair, like a deserted clearing on
which the forest had once more begun to encroach; such was my
appearance nearly a quarter of a century ago, and such, with some
modification, it is to this day. Like Cain, I was branded--branded by
Nature with the stamp of abnormal ugliness, as I was gifted by Nature
with iron and abnormal strength and considerable intellectual powers.
So ugly was I that the spruce young men of my College, though they
were proud enough of my feats of endurance and physical prowess, did
not even care to be seen walking with me. Was it wonderful that I was
misanthropic and sullen? Was it wonderful that I brooded and worked
alone, and had no friends--at least, only one? I was set apart by
Nature to live alone, and draw comfort from her breast, and hers only.
Women hated the sight of me. Only a week before I had heard one call
me a "monster" when she thought I was out of hearing, and say that I
had converted her to the monkey theory. Once, indeed, a woman
pretended to care for me, and I lavished all the pent-up affection of
my nature upon her. Then money that was to have come to me went
elsewhere, and she discarded me. I pleaded with her as I have never
pleaded with any living creature before or since, for I was caught by
her sweet face, and loved her; and in the end by way of answer she
took me to the glass, and stood side by side with me, and looked into
it.