Добавил:
ivanov666
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз:
Предмет:
Файл:Сага о Форсайтах. В петле. Книга для чтения на английском языке
.pdf
a shrieking, whistling, dancing, jostling, grotesque
and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses and
mouthorgans, penny whistles and long feathers,
every appanage of idiocy, as it seemed to him. Ma
feking! Of course, it had been relieved! Good! But
was that an excuse? Who were these people, what
were they, where had they come from into the West
End? His face was tickled, his ears whistled into.
Girls cried: ‘Keep your hair on, stucco!’ A youth so
knocked off his tophat that he recovered it with
difficulty. Crackers were exploding beneath his
nose, between his feet. He was bewildered, exasper
ated, offended. This stream of people came from every
quarter, as if impulse had unlocked floodgates, let
flow waters of whose existence he had heard, per
haps, but believed in never. This, then, was the pop
ulace, the innumerable living negation of gentility
and Forsyteism. This was — egad! — Democracy! It
stank, yelled, was hideous! In the East End, or even
Soho, perhaps — but here in Regent Street, in Picca
dilly! What were the police about! In 1900, Soames,
with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the caul
dron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could
hardly believe his scorching eyes. The whole thing
was unspeakable! These people had no restraint,
they seemed to think him funny; such swarms of
them, rude, coarse, laughing — and what laughter!
Nothing sacred to them! He shouldn’t be sur
prised if they began to break windows. In Pall Mall,
PART II
311
past those august dwellings, to enter which people
paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling, dancing
dervish of a crowd was swarming. From the Club
windows his own kind were looking out on them
with regulated amusement. They didn’t realise!
IN CHANCERY
Why, this was serious — might come to anything!
The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would
come in different mood! He remembered there
had been a mob in the late eighties, when he was
at Brighton; they had smashed things and made
speeches. But more than dread, he felt a deep sur
prise. They were hysterical — it wasn’t English! And
all about the relief of a little town as big as — Wat
ford, six thousand miles away. Restraint, reserve!
Those qualities to him more dear almost than life,
those indispensable attributes of property and cul
ture, where were they? It wasn’t English! No, it
wasn’t English! So Soames brooded, threading his
way on. It was as if he had suddenly caught sight of
someone cutting the covenant ‘for quiet possession’
out of his legal documents; or of a monster lurking
and stalking out in the future, casting its shadow
before. Their want of stolidity, their want of rever
ence! It was like discovering that ninetenths of the
people of England were foreigners. And if that were
so — then, anything might happen!
At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George For
syte, very sunburnt from racing, holding a false
nose in his hand.
312
“Hallo, Soames!” he said, “have a nose!”
Soames responded with a pale smile.
“Got this from one of these sportsmen,” went
on George, who had evidently been dining; “had
to lay him out — for trying to bash my hat. I say,
one of these days we shall have to fight these
chaps, they’re getting so damned cheeky — all rad
icals and socialists. They want our goods. You tell
Uncle James that, it’ll make him sleep.”
1
‘In vino veritas
,’ thought Soames, but he only nod
ded, and passed on up Hamilton Place. There was but
a trickle of roysterers in Park Lane, not very noisy.
And looking up at the houses he thought: ‘After all,
we’re the backbone of the country. They won’t upset
2
us easily. Possession’s nine points of the law.
’
But, as he closed the door of his father’s house
behind him, all that queer outlandish nightmare in
the streets passed out of his mind almost as com
pletely as if, having dreamed it, he had awakened
in the warm clean morning comfort of his spring
mattressed bed.
Walking into the centre of the great empty
drawingroom, he stood still.
A wife! Somebody to talk things over with. One
had a right! Damn it! One had a right!
PART II
1
In vino veritas — (лат.) Истина в вине
2
Possession’s nine points of the law. — (погов.) Коль
завладел, отнять трудно.
313
PA R T I I I
Chapter I
SOAMES IN PARIS
Soames had travelled little. Aged nineteen he
had made the ‘petty tour’ with his father, mother,
and Winifred — Brussels, the Rhine, Switzerland,
and home by way of Paris. Aged twentyseven,
just when he began to take interest in pictures,
he had spent five hot weeks in Italy, looking into
the Renaissance — not so much in it as he had
been led to expect — and a fortnight in Paris on
his way back, looking into himself, as became a
Forsyte surrounded by people so strongly self
centred and ‘foreign’ as the French. His knowl
edge of their language being derived from his
public school, he did not understand them when
they spoke. Silence he had found better for all
parties
1
; one did not make a fool of oneself. He
314
1
for all parties — (зд.) всем; для всех
had disliked the look of the men’s clothes, the
closedin cabs, the theatres which looked like bee
hives, the Galleries which smelled of beeswax. He
was too cautious and too shy to explore that side
of Paris supposed by Forsytes to constitute its
attraction under the rose; and as for a collector’s
bargain — not one to be had! As Nicholas might
have put it — they were a grasping lot. He had
come back uneasy, saying Paris was overrated.
When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to
Paris, it was but his third attempt on the centre
of civilisation. This time, however, the mountain
was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more
deeply civilised than Paris, and perhaps he really
was. Moreover, he had a definite objective. This
was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of taste and
immorality, but the prosecution of his own legit
imate affairs. He went, indeed, because things
were getting past a joke. The watch went on and
on, and — nothing — nothing! Jolyon had never
returned to Paris, and no one else was ‘suspect!’
Busy with new and very confidential matters,
Soames was realising more than ever how essen
tial reputation is to a solicitor. But at night and
in his leisure moments he was ravaged by the
thought that time was always flying and money
flowing in, and his own future as much ‘in irons’
as ever. Since Mafeking night he had become
aware that a ‘young fool of a doctor’ was hanging
PART III
315
round Annette. Twice he had come across him —
a cheerful young fool, not more than thirty.
Nothing annoyed Soames so much as cheerful
ness — an indecent, extravagant sort of quality,
which had no relation to facts. The mixture of his
IN CHANCERY
desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming tor
ture; and lately the thought had come to him that
perhaps Irene knew she was being shadowed: It
was this which finally decided him to go and see
for himself; to go and once more try to break down
her repugnance, her refusal to make her own and
his path comparatively smooth once more. If he
failed again — well, he would see what she did with
1
herself
, anyway!
He went to an hotel in the Rue Caumartin,
highly recommended to Forsytes, where practically
nobody spoke French. He had formed no plan. He
did not want to startle her; yet must contrive that
she had no chance to evade him by flight. And next
morning he set out in bright weather.
Paris had an air of gaiety, a sparkle over its star
shape which almost annoyed Soames. He stepped
gravely, his nose lifted a little sideways in real
curiosity. He desired now to understand things
French. Was not Annette French? There was much
to be got out of his visit, if he could only get it. In
316
1
what she did with herself — (зд.) чем она там занима
ется
this laudable mood and the Place de la Concorde
he was nearly run down three times. He came on
the ‘Cours la Reine,’ where Irene’s hotel was situ
ated, almost too suddenly, for he had not yet fixed
on his procedure. Crossing over to the river side,
he noted the building, white and cheerfullooking,
with green sunblinds, seen through a screen of
planetree leaves. And, conscious that it would be
far better to meet her casually in some open place
than to risk a call, he sat down on a bench whence
he could watch the entrance. It was not quite
eleven o’clock, and improbable that she had yet
gone out. Some pigeons were strutting and preen
ing their feathers in the pools of sunlight between
the shadows of the planetrees. A workman in a
blue blouse passed, and threw them crumbs from
the paper which contained his dinner. A ‘bonne’
coiffed with ribbon shepherded two little girls with
pigtails and frilled drawers. A cab meandered by,
1
whose cocher
wore a blue coat and a blackglazed
hat. To Soames a kind of affectation seemed to
cling about it all, a sort of picturesqueness which
was out of date. A theatrical people, the French!
He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with a sense of
injury that Fate should be casting his life into
outlandish waters. He shouldn’t wonder if Irene
quite enjoyed this foreign life; she had never been
PART III
1
cocher — (фр.) извозчик, кучер
317
properly English — even to look at! And he began
considering which of those windows could be hers
under the green sunblinds. How could he word
what he had come to say so that it might pierce
the defence of her proud obstinacy? He threw the
IN CHANCERY
fagend of his cigarette at a pigeon, with the
thought: ‘I can’t stay here for ever twiddling my
thumbs. Better give it up and call on her in the late
afternoon.’ But he still sat on, heard twelve strike,
and then halfpast. ‘I’ll wait till one,’ he thought,
‘while I’m about it.’ But just then he started up, and
shrinkingly sat down again. A woman had come out
in a creamcoloured frock, and was moving away
under a fawncoloured parasol. Irene herself! He
waited till she was too far away to recognise him,
then set out after her. She was strolling as though
she had no particular objective; moving, if he re
membered rightly, toward the Bois de Boulogne.
For half an hour at least he kept his distance on
the far side of the way till she had passed into
the Bois itself. Was she going to meet someone
after all? Some confounded Frenchman — one of
1
those ‘Bel Ami’ chaps
, perhaps, who had nothing
to do but hang about women — for he had read
that book with difficulty and a sort of disgusted
fascination. He followed doggedly along a shady
1
one of those ‘Bel Ami’ chaps — молодой человек, на
поминающий героя романа Мопассана «Милый друг»
318
alley, losing sight of her now and then when the path
curved. And it came back to him how, long ago,
one night in Hyde Park he had slid and sneaked
from tree to tree, from seat to seat, hunting blind
ly, ridiculously, in burning jealousy for her and
young Bosinney. The path bent sharply, and, hur
rying, he came on her sitting in front of a small
1
fountain — a little greenbronze Niobe
veiled in
hair to her slender hips, gazing at the pool she had
wept: He came on her so suddenly that he was past
before he could turn and take off his hat. She did
not start up. She had always had great selfcom
mand — it was one of the things he most admired
in her, one of his greatest grievances against her,
because he had never been able to tell what she
was thinking. Had she realised that he was follow
ing? Her selfpossession made him angry; and, dis
daining to explain his presence, he pointed to the
mournful little Niobe, and said: “That’s rather a
good thing.”
He could see, then, that she was struggling to
preserve her composure.
“I didn’t want to startle you; is this one of your
haunts?”
“Yes.”
PART III
1
Niobe — Ниобея (в греч. мифологии жена Тантала,
мать 14 детей, за насмешку над богами лишилась всех де
тей, была превращена в скалу, источающую слезы)
319
“A little lonely.” As he spoke, a lady, strolling
by, paused to look at the fountain and passed on.
Irene’s eyes followed her.
“No,” she said, prodding the ground with her para
sol, “never lonely. One has always one’s shadow.”
IN CHANCERY
Soames understood; and, looking at her hard, he
exclaimed: “Well, it’s your own fault. You can be
free of it at any moment. Irene, come back to me,
and be free.”
Irene laughed.
“Don’t!” cried Soames, stamping his foot; “it’s
inhuman. Listen! Is there any condition I can make
which will bring you back to me? If I promise you
a separate house — and just a visit now and then?”
Irene rose, something wild suddenly in her face
and figure. “None! None! None! You may hunt me
to the grave. I will not come.”
Outraged and on edge, Soames recoiled. “Don’t
make a scene!” he said sharply. And they both
stood motionless, staring at the little Niobe, whose
greenish flesh the sunlight was burnishing.
“That’s your last word, then,” muttered Soames,
clenching his hands; “you condemn us both.”
Irene bent her head. “I can’t come back. Goodbye!”
A feeling of monstrous injustice flared up in
Soames. “Stop!” he said, “and listen to me a mo
ment. You gave me a sacred vow — you came to
me without a penny. You had all I could give you.
You broke that vow without cause, you made me
320
Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]