"William Morris - The Wood Beyond the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris William)

THE OLD MAN TELLS WALTER OF HIMSELF. WALTER

SEES A SHARD IN THE CLIFF-WALL

But when they had done their meat and drink the master and the shipmen went about the
watering of the ship, and the others strayed off along the meadow, so that presently Walter was
left alone with the carle, and fell to speech with him and said: “Father, meseemeth thou shouldest
have some strange tale to tell, and as yet we have asked thee of nought save meat for our bellies:
now if I ask thee concerning thy life, and how thou camest hither, and abided here, wilt thou tell
me aught?”


The old man smiled on him and said: “Son, my tale were long to tell; and mayhappen concerning
much thereof my memory should fail me; and withal there is grief therein, which I were loth to
awaken: nevertheless if thou ask, I will answer as I may, and in any case will tell thee nought
save the truth.”


Said Walter: “Well then, hast thou been long here?”


“Yea,” said the carle, “since I was a young man, and a stalwarth knight.”


Said Walter: “This house, didst thou build it, and raise these garths, and plant orchard and
vineyard, and gather together the neat and the sheep, or did some other do all this for thee?”


Said the carle: “I did none of all this; there was one here before me, and I entered into his
inheritance, as though this were a lordly manor, with a fair castle thereon, and all well stocked
and plenished.”

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Said Walter: “Didst thou find thy foregoer alive here?”


“Yea,” said the elder, “yet he lived but for a little while after I came to him.”


He was silent a while, and then he said: “I slew him: even so would he have it, though I bade him
a better lot.”


Said Walter: “Didst thou come hither of thine own will?”


“Mayhappen,” said the carle; “who knoweth? Now have I no will to do either this or that. It is
wont that maketh me do, or refrain.”