"Kuttner, Henry - The Children's Hour UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

“That isn’t all,” she said.with conviction. “We were—fighting something. It was wrong to fight—I never did before. I never knew it was there until I fought it last night. But now I do know. What was it, Jim?”
He looked down at her gravely, a tremendous excitement beginning to well up inside him. Perhaps, somehow, they had succeeded last night in breaking the spell. Perhaps His grip had been loosened after all, when they defied the pattern even as briefly as they did.
But this was no time for temporizing. Now, while the bonds were slack, was the moment to strike hard and sever them if he could. Tomorrow she might have slipped back again into the old distraction that shut him out. He must tell her now— Together they might yet shake off the tighening coils that had been closing so gently, so inexorably about her. -
“Clarissa,” he said, and turned on the sofa to face her. “Clarissa, I think I’d better tell you something.” Then a sudden, unreasoning doubt seized him and he said irrelevantly, “Are you sure you love me?” It was foolishly finportant to be reassured just then. He did not know why.
Clarissa smiled and leaned forward into his arms, putting her cheek against his shoulder. From there, unseen, she murmured, “I’ll always ‘love you, dear.”
For a long moment he did not speak. Then, holding her in one arm, not watching her face, he began.
“Ever since we met, Clarissa darling, things have been happening that—worried me. About you. I’m going to tell you if I can. I think there’s something, or someone, very powerful, watching over you and forcing you into some course, toward some end I can’t do more than guess at. I’m going to try to tell you exactly why I think so, and if I have to stop without finishing, you’ll know I don’t stop on purpose. I’ll have been stopped.”

Leasing paused, a little awed at his own daring in defying that Someone whose powerful hand he had felt hushing him before. But no pad of silence was pressed against his 11ps this time and he went on wonderingly, expecting each word he
spoke to be the last. Clarissa lay silent against his shoulder, breathing quietly, not moving much. He could not see her face.
And so he told her the story, very simply and without references -to his own bewilderment or to the wild conclusions he had reached. He told her about the moment in the park when she had been drawn away down a funnel of luminous rings. He reminded her of the vanishinent of the summerhouse. He told of the dreamlike episode on the hallway here, when he called irrationally into the mirrored dimness, or thought he called. He told her of their strange, bemused ride uptown the night before, and how the pattern swung the streets around under their wheels. He told her of his two vivid dreams through which she-yet not she—had moved so assuredly. And then, without drawing any conclusions aloud, he asked her what she was thinking.
She lay still a moment longer in his arms. Then she sat
up slowly, pushing back the smooth dark hair and meeting
his eyes with the feverish brilliance that had by now become -
natural to her. -
“So that’s it,” she said dreamily, and was silent.
“What is?” he asked almost irritably, yet suffused now with a sense of triumph because the Someone had not silenced him after all, had slipped this once and let the whole s-tory come out into open air at last. Now at last he thought he might learn the truth.
“Then I was right,” Clarissa went on. “I was fighting something last night. It’s odd, but I never even knew it was there until the moment I began to fight it. Now I know it’s always been there. I wonder—” -
When she did not go on, Leasing said bluntly, “Have you
ever realized that . . . that things were different for you? Tell me, Clarissa, what is it you think of when you .
when you stand and lock at something trivial so long?”
She turned her head and gave him a long, grave look that told him more plainly than words that the whole spell was not yet dissolved. She made no answer to the question, but she said.
“For some reason I keep remembering a fairy story my aunt used to tell me when I was small. I’ve never forgotten it, though it certainly isn’t much of a story. You see—”
She paused again, and her eyes brightened as he looked,
almost as if lights had gone on behind them in a dark roor~i
full of mirrors. The look of expectancy which he knew so
well tightened the lines of her face for a moment, and she smiled delightedly, without apparent reason and not really seeming to know she smiled.
“Yes,” she went on.. “I remember it well. Once upon a time, in a -ldngdom in the- middle of the forest; a little girl was born. All the people in the country were blind. The sun shone so brightly that none of them could see. So the little girl went about with her eyes shut too, and didn’t even guess~ that such a thing as sight existed.
“One day as she walked alone in’ the woods she heard a voice beside her. ‘Who are you?’ she asked the voice, and the voice replied, .1 am your guardian.’ The little girl said, ‘But I don’t need a guardian. I know these woods very well. I was born here.’ The voice said, ‘Ah, you were born here, yes, but you don’t belong here, child. You are not blind like the others.’ And the little girl exclaimed, ‘Blind? What’s that?’
“I can’t tell you yet,’ the voice answered, ‘but you must know that you are a king’s daughter, born among these humble people as our king’s children sometimes are. My duty is to watch over you and help you to open your eyes when the time comes. But the time is not yet. You are too young— the sun would blind you. So go on about your business, child, and remember I am always here beside you. The day will come when you open your eyes and see.”
Clarissa paused. Leasing said impatiently, “Well, did she?”
Clarissa sighed. “My aunt never would finish the story. Maybe that’s why I’ve always remembered it.”
Leasing started t~ speak. “I don’t think—” But something in Clariss(s face stopped him. An exalted and enchanted look, that Christmas-morning expression carried to fulfillment, as if the child were awake and remembering what many-lighted, silver-spangled glory awaited him downstairs. She said in a small, clear voice.
“It’s true. Of course it’s true! All you’ve said, and the fairy tale too. Why; I’m the king’s child. Of course I am!” And she put both hands to her eyes in a sudden childish gesture, as if half expecting the allegory of blindness to be literal.
“Clarissa!” Leasing said.
She looked at him with wide, dazzled eyes that scarcely knew him. And for a moment a strange memory came unbidden into his mind and brought terror with it. Alice, walking with the Fawn in the enchanted woods where nothing has a name, walking in friendship with her arm
about the Fawn’s neck. And the Fawn’i words when they came to the edge of the woods and memory returned to them both. How it started away from her, shaking off the arm, wildness returning to the eyes that had looked as serenely into Alice’s as Clarissa h-ad looked into his. “Why— I’m a Fawn,” it said in astonishment. “And you’re a Human Child!” -
Alien species. -
“I wonder why rm not a bit surprised?” murmured Clarissa. “I must have known it all along, really. Oh, I wonder what comes next?”
Leasing stared at her, appalled. She was very like a child now, too enraptured by the prospect of—of what?—to think of any possible consequences. It frightened him to see how sure she was of splendor to come, and of nothing but good in that splendor. He hated to mar the look of lovely anticipation on her face, but - he must. He had wanted her to help him fight this monstrous possibility if she could bring herself to accept it at all. He had not expected instant acceptance and instant rapture. She must fight it— - --
“Clarissa,” he said, “think! If it’s true. . . and we may be wrong. . . don’t you see what it means? He. . . they.
won’t let us be together, Clarissa. We can’t be married.”
Her luminous eyes turned to him joyously.
“Of course we’ll be married, darling. Thetjre only looking after me, don’t you see? Not hurting me, just watching. I’m sure they’d never do anything to hurt me. Why darling, for all we know you may be one of us, too. I wonder if you are.
It almost stands to reason, don’t you think? Or- why would
They have let us fall in love? Oh, darling—” -
Suddenly he knew,that someone was standing behind him. Someone— For one heart-stopping moment he wondered if the jealous god himself had come down to claim Clarissa, and he dared not turn his head. But when Clarissa’s shining eyes lifted to the face beyond his, and showed no surprise, he felt a little reassurance. -
He sat perfectly still. He knew he could not have turned if he wanted. He could only watch Clarissa, and though no words were spoken in that silence, he saw her expression change. The rapturous joy drained slowly out of it. She shook -her head, bewilderment and disbelief blurring the ecstasy of a moment before.
-“No?” she said to that standing someone behind him. “But I thought— Oh, no, you mustn’t! You wouldn’t! It isn’t fair!”
And the dazzling dark eyes flooded with sudden tears that -