"Robert F. Young - One Love Have I" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

advent of the Deep Freeze, it was doubly true now. With the Deep Freeze man had attained Greek
tragedy.
He lit a cigarette and the bright flame of his lighter brought the deepening shadows of the street into
bold relief. With a shock he realized that night had fallen, and looking up between the tangled trees, he
saw the first star.
 He stood up and started down the sloping street. As he progressed, more stars came out, bringing
the ancient macadam into dim reality. A night wind came up and breathed in the trees, whispered in the
wild timothy that had pre-empted tidy lawns, rattled rachitic shutters.
He knew that seeing the house would only cause him pain, but it was a pain he had to endure, for
homecoming would not be complete until he had stepped upon his own doorstep. So when he came to
Maple Street he turned down the overgrown sidewalk, making his way slowly between giant hedges and
riotous saplings. For a moment he thought he saw the flicker of a light far down the street, but he could
not be sure.
He knew of course that there was very little chance that the house would still be standing—a hundred
years is a long time for a house to live—that if it were still standing it would probably be changed beyond
recognition, decayed beyond recognition.
And yet, it was still standing and it had not changed at all. It was just the same as it had been when he
had left it over a hundred years ago, and there was a light shining in the living-room window.
He stood very still in the shambles of the street. The house isn't real, he told himself. It can't be real. I
won't believe that it's real until I touch it, until I feel its wood beneath my fingertips, its floor beneath my
feet. He walked slowly up the little walk. The front lawn was neatly trimmed and there were two tiny
catalpa trees standing in newly turned plots of ground. He mounted the steps to the latticed porch and the
steps were solid beneath his feet and gave forth the sound of his footsteps.
He touched the print lock of the door with the tip of his ring finger and the door obediently opened.
Diffidently he stepped over the threshold and the door swung gently to behind him.
There was a mauve-gray parlor suite in the living room and it matched the mauve-gray curtains on the
windows. Pine knots were ruddy in the open fireplace and his books stood in stately rows on the banking
built-in shelves. Miranda's knickknacks covered the mantel.
His easy chair was drawn up before the fire and his slippers were waiting on the floor beside it. His
favorite pipe reposed on a nearby end table and a canister of his favorite tobacco stood beside it. On the
arm of the chair was a brand new copy of The New Sanhedrin.
He stood immobile just within the door, trying hard to breathe. Then he superimposed a rigid
objectivity upon the subjective chaos of his thoughts, and forced himself to see the room as it really was
and not as he wished it to be.
The lamp in the window was like the lamp Miranda had kept in the window a hundred years ago, but
it wasn't the same lamp. It was a duplication. And the parlor suite was much like the one that had been in
the room a hundred years ago when he had carried Miranda over the threshold, and yet it wasn't quite
the same, and neither were the curtains. There were differences in the material, in the design—slight
differences, but apparent enough if you looked for them. And his easy chair—that was a duplication too,
as were his slippers and his pipe; The New Sanhedrin.
The fireplace was the same, and yet not quite the same: the pattern of the bricks was different, the
bricks themselves were different, the mantel was different. And the knickknacks on the mantel ...
He choked back a sob as he walked over to examine them more closely, for they were not
duplications. They were originals and time had been unkind to them. Some of them were broken and a
patina of the years covered all of them. They were like children's toys found in an attic on a rainy day ...
He bent over his books, and they were originals too. He pulled one from the shelf and opened it. The
yellowed pages betrayed the passage of the years and he replaced it tenderly. Then he noticed the diary
on the topmost shelf.
He took it down with trembling hands, opened and turned its pages. When he saw the familiar
handwriting, he knew whose diary it was and suddenly his knees were weak and he could not stand, and