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Файл:Сага о Форсайтах. Сдается внаем. Книга для чтения на английском языке
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“We’ve made one blooming error,” said Fleur,
when they had gone half a mile. “I’m hungry.”
Jon produced a stick of chocolate. They shared
it and their tongues were loosened. They discussed
the nature of their homes and previous existences,
which had a kind of fascinating unreality up on
that lonely height. There remained but one thing
solid in Jon’s past — his mother; but one thing solid
in Fleur’s — her father; and of these figures, as
though seen in the distance with disapproving
faces, they spoke little.
The Down dipped and rose again toward Chanc
tonbury Ring; a sparkle of far sea came into view,
a sparrowhawk hovered in the sun’s eye so that
the bloodnourished brown of his wings gleamed
nearly red. Jon had a passion for birds, and an ap
titude for sitting very still to watch them; keen
sighted, and with a memory for what interested
him, on birds he was almost worth listening to. But
in Chanctonbury Ring there were none — its great
beech temple was empty of life, and almost chilly
at this early hour; they came out willingly again
into the sun on the far side. It was Fleur’s turn
now. She spoke of dogs, and the way people treated
them. It was wicked to keep them on chains! She
would like to flog people who did that. Jon was
astonished to find her so humanitarian. She knew
a dog, it seemed, which some farmer near her
home kept chained up at the end of his chicken
PART I
101
run, in all weathers, till it had almost lost its voice
from barking!
TO LET
“And the misery is,” she said vehemently, “that
if the poor thing didn’t bark at every one who passes
it wouldn’t be kept there. I do think men are cun
ning brutes. I’ve let it go twice, on the sly; it’s
nearly bitten me both times, and then it goes sim
ply mad with joy; but it always runs back home at
last, and they chain it up again. If I had my way,
I’d chain that man up.” Jon saw her teeth and her
eyes gleam. “I’d brand him on his forehead with
the word ‘Brute’; that would teach him!”
Jon agreed that it would be a good remedy. “It’s
their sense of property,” he said, “which makes
people chain things. The last generation thought
of nothing but property; and that’s why there was
the War.”
“Oh!” said Fleur, “I never thought of that. Your
people and mine quarrelled about property. And
anyway we’ve all got it — at least, I suppose your
people have.”
“Oh! yes, luckily; I don’t suppose I shall be any
good at making money.”
“If you were, I don’t believe I should like you.”
Jon slipped his hand tremulously under her arm.
Fleur looked straight before her and chanted:
102
“Jon, Jon, the farmer’s son,
Stole a pig, and away he run!”
Jon’s arm crept round her waist.
“This is rather sudden,” said Fleur calmly; “do
you often do it?”
Jon dropped his arm. But when she laughed his
arm stole back again; and Fleur began to sing:
“O who will o’er the downs so free,
O who will with me ride?
O who will up and follow me — ”
“Sing, Jon!”
Jon sang. The larks joined in, sheepbells, and
an early morning church far away over in Steyn
ing. They went on from tune to tune, till Fleur
said: “My God! I am hungry now!”
“Oh! I am sorry!”
She looked round into his face. “Jon, you’re
rather a darling.”
And she pressed his hand against her waist. Jon
almost reeled from happiness. A yellowandwhite
dog coursing a hare startled them apart. They
watched the two vanish down the slope, till Fleur
said with a sigh: “He’ll never catch it, thank good
ness! What’s the time? Mine’s stopped. I never
wound it.”
Jon looked at his watch. “By Jove!” he said,
“mine’s stopped; too.”
They walked on again, but only hand in hand.
“If the grass is dry,” said Fleur, “let’s sit down
for half a minute.”
PART I
103
Jon took off his coat, and they shared it.
“Smell! Actually wild thyme!”
TO LET
With his arm round her waist again, they sat
some minutes in silence.
“We are goats!” cried Fleur, jumping up; “we
shall be most fearfully late, and look so silly, and
put them on their guard. Look here, Jon: we only
came out to get an appetite for breakfast, and lost
our way. See?”
“Yes,” said Jon.
“It’s serious; there’ll be a stopper put on us. Are
1
you a good liar?
”
“I believe not very; but I can try.”
Fleur frowned. “You know,” she said, “I realize
that they don’t mean us to be friends.”
“Why not?”
“I told you why.”
“But that’s silly.”
“Yes; but you don’t know my father!”
“I suppose he’s fearfully fond of you.”
“You see, I’m an only child. And so are you —
of your mother. Isn’t it a bore? There’s so much
expected of one. By the time they’ve done expect
ing, one’s as good as dead.”
“Yes,” muttered Jon, “life’s beastly short. One
wants to live forever, and know everything.”
104
1
Are you a good liar? — (разг.) Вы умеете убедительно
врать?
“And love everybody?”
“No,” cried Jon; “I only want to love once — you.”
“Indeed! You’re coming on! Oh! Look! There’s
the chalkpit; we can’t be very far now. Let’s run.”
Jon followed, wondering fearfully if he had of
fended her.
The chalkpit was full of sunshine and the mur
muration of bees. Fleur flung back her hair.
“Well,” she said, “in case of accidents, you may
give me one kiss, Jon,” and she pushed her cheek for
ward. With ecstasy he kissed that hot soft cheek.
“Now, remember! We lost our way; and leave it
to me as much as you can. I’m going to be rather
beastly to you; it’s safer; try and be beastly to me!”
Jon shook his head. “That’s impossible.”
“Just to please me; till five o’clock, at all events.”
“Anybody will be able to see through it,” said
Jon gloomily.
“Well, do your best. Look! There they are! Wave
your hat! Oh! you haven’t got one. Well, I’ll cooee!
Get a little away from me, and look sulky.”
Five minutes later, entering the house and do
ing his utmost to look sulky, Jon heard her clear
voice in the diningroom: “Oh! I’m simply raven
ous! He’s going to be a farmer — and he loses his
way! The boy’s an idiot!”
PART I
1
1
I’ll cooee! — (зд.) Я им покричу! (cooee — восклица
ние для привлечения внимания у австралийских туземцев)
105
Chapter IX
TO LET
GOYA
Lunch was over and Soames mounted to the
picturegallery in his house near Mapleduram. He
had what Annette called “a grief.” Fleur was not
yet home. She had been expected on Wednesday;
had wired that it would be Friday; and again on
Friday that it would be Sunday afternoon; and
here were her aunt, and her cousins the Cardigans,
and this fellow Profond, and everything flat as a
pancake for the want of her. He stood before his
Gauguin — sorest point of his collection. He had
bought the ugly great thing with two early Ma
1
before the War, because there was such a
tisses
fuss about those PostImpressionist chaps. He was
wondering whether Profond would take them off
his hands — the fellow seemed not to know what
to do with his money — when he heard his sister’s
voice say: “I think that’s a horrid thing, Soames,”
and saw that Winifred had followed him up.
“Oh! you do?” he said dryly; “I gave five hun
dred for it.”
“Fancy! Women aren’t made like that even if
they are black.”
1
early Matisses — картины, относящиеся к раннему пе
риоду творчества французского художника Матисса (1869–
1954)
106
Soames uttered a glum laugh. “You didn’t come
up to tell me that.”
“No. Do you know that Jolyon’s boy is staying
with Val and his wife?”
Soames spun round. “What?”
“Yes,” drawled Winifred; “he’s gone to live with
them there while he learns farming.”
Soames had turned away, but her voice pursued
him as he walked up and down.
“I warned Val that neither of them was to be
spoken to about old matters.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Winifred shrugged her substantial shoulders.
“Fleur does what she likes. You’ve always spoiled
her. Besides, my dear boy, what’s the harm?”
“The harm!” muttered Soames. “Why, she — ”
he checked himself. The Juno, the handkerchief,
Fleur’s eyes, her questions, and now this delay in
her return — the symptoms seemed to him so sin
ister that, faithful to his nature, he could not part
with them.
“I think you take too much care,” said Winifred.
“If I were you, I should tell her of that old matter.
It’s no good thinking that girls in these days are as
they used to be. Where they pick up their knowl
edge I can’t tell, but they seem to know everything.”
Over Soames’ face, closely composed, passed a
sort of spasm, and Winifred added hastily: “If you
don’t like to speak of it, I could for you.”
PART I
107
Soames shook his head. Unless there was abso
lute necessity the thought that his adored daughter
TO LET
should learn of that old scandal hurt his pride too
much. “No,” he said, “not yet. Never if I can help it.”
“Nonsense, my dear. Think what people are!”
“Twenty years is a long time,” muttered Soames.
“Outside our family, who’s likely to remember?”
Winifred was silenced. She inclined more and
more to that peace and quietness of which Mon
tague Dartie had deprived her in her youth. And,
since pictures always depressed her, she soon went
down again.
Soames passed into the corner where, side by side,
hung his real Goya and the copy of the fresco “La
Vendimia.” His acquisition of the real Goya rather
beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests
and passions which mesh the brightwinged fly of
human life. The real Goya’s noble owner’s ancestor
had come into possession of it during some Spanish
war — it was in a word, loot. The noble owner had
remained in ignorance of its value until in the nine
ties an enterprising critic discovered that a Spanish
painter named Goya was a genius. It was only a fair
Goya, but almost unique in England, and the noble
owner became a marked man. Having many posses
sions and that aristocratic culture which, indepen
dent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the
sounder principle that one must know everything
and be fearfully interested in life, he had fully in
108
tended to keep an article which contributed to his
reputation while he was alive, and to leave it to the
nation after he was dead. Fortunately for Soames,
the House of Lords was violently attacked in 1909,
and the noble owner became alarmed and angry. ‘If,’
he said to himself, ‘they think they can have it both
ways they are very much mistaken. So long as they
leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can have
some of my pictures at my death. But if the nation is
going to bait me, and rob me like this, I’m damned if
I won’t sell the lot. They can’t have my private prop
erty and my public spirit — both.’ He brooded in this
fashion for several months till one morning, after
reading the speech of a certain statesman, he tele
graphed to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin.
On going over the collection Bodkin, than whose
opinion on market values none was more sought, pro
nounced that with a free hand to sell to America,
Germany, and other places where there was an in
terest in art, a lot more money could be made than
by selling in England. The noble owner’s public
spirit — he said — was well known but the pictures
were unique. The noble owner put this opinion in his
pipe and smoked it for a year. At the end of that time
he read another speech by the same statesman, and
telegraphed to his agents: “Give Bodkin a free hand.”
It was at this juncture that Bodkin conceived the
idea which salved the Goya and two other unique
pictures for the native country of the noble owner.
PART I
109
With one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to the
foreign market, with the other he formed a list of
TO LET
private British collectors. Having obtained what he
considered the highest possible bids from across the
seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private
British collectors, and invited them, of their public
spirit, to outbid. In three instances (including the
Goya) out of twentyone he was successful. And why?
One of the private collectors made buttons — he had
made so many that he desired that his wife should be
called Lady “Buttons.” He therefore bought a unique
picture at great cost, and gave it to the nation. It was
“part,” his friends said, “of his general game.” The
second of the private collectors was an Americophobe,
and bought a unique picture to “spite the damned
Yanks.” The third of the private collectors was Soames,
who — more sober than either of the others — bought
after a visit to Madrid, because he was certain that
Goya was still on the up grade. Goya was not boom
ing at the moment, but he would come again; and,
1
looking at that portrait, Hogarthian
, Manetesque
in its directness, but with its own queer sharp beauty
of paint, he was perfectly satisfied still that he had
made no error, heavy though the price had been —
2
1
Hogarthian — производное от фамилии Хогарт; Вильям
Хогарт (1697–1764), английский художниксатирик
2
Manetesque — производное от фамилии Мане; Эду
ард Мане (1832–1882), французский художникимпресси
онист
110
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