Дом с привидениями. Уровень 2 / A Haunted House

The damnation which visited the disbeliever in them was only a sense of illegitimate freedom. What now takes the place of those things I wonder? Men perhaps. The masculine point of view governs our lives. It sets the standard. It established Whitaker’s Table of Precedency[17 - Whitaker’s Table of Precedency – ежегодные справочники общей информации, иерархические таблицы], the mahogany sideboards and the Landseer prints[18 - Landseer prints – гравюры Ландсира], Gods and Devils, Hell and so forth.

They leave us all with a sense of illegitimate freedom. If freedom exists, of course.

In certain lights that mark on the wall seems volumetric. Nor is it entirely circular. I cannot be sure, but it cast a perceptible shadow. I run my finger down that strip of the wall. It will mount and descend. A smooth tumulus like those barrows on the South Downs which are either tombs or camps. Of the two I prefer the tombs, like most English people.

There must be some book about it. Some antiquary dug up those bones. He gave them a name.

What sort of a man is an antiquary, I wonder? Retired Colonels for the most part[19 - for the most part – большей частью], I daresay. They examine clods of earth and stone. They get into correspondence with the clergy. The Colonel himself feels philosophic. He accumulates evidence. He finally believes in the camp. Suddenly a stroke kills him. His last conscious thoughts are not of wife or child.

His last conscious thoughts are of the camp and that arrow-head there. It is now at the local museum, together with the foot of a Chinese murderess, a handful of Elizabethan nails, Tudor clay pipes, a piece of Roman pottery, and Nelson’s wineglass.

No, no, nothing is proved. Nothing is known. I get up at this very moment. I ascertain that the mark on the wall is really the head of a gigantic old nail. But what shall I gain? Knowledge?

And what is knowledge? Our learned men are the descendants of witches and hermits.

They crouched in caves. They interrogated shrew-mice. They wrote down the language of the stars.

Yes, we can imagine a very pleasant world. A quiet, spacious world, with the flowers so red and blue in the open fields. A world without professors or specialists or house-keepers. How peaceful it is down here! How peaceful it is in the centre of the world!

I must jump up and see for myself what that mark on the wall really is.