Ock: переводы

→The ioth November was a quiet, heavy day, and Jeremy had gone fishing again with Paul Kellow and Ben Carter. In the winter, instead of staying out till supper-time, they usually returned at dusk, so Demelza decided she would take a stroll down to the cove in the hope of meeting them as they returned.

→'Never rely on it,' said Ross, doubling his fist. 'If you -' 'But I do!' said Jeremy. 'Am doing at this very moment. Seriously. Can we be serious for a little while?'

→'I swear I never screamed like that!' 'I didn't know you when you were eight. But even at eighteen you had your crazy moments.' 'Nonsense.'

→This morning, as if by coincidence, she was forking round Hugh Armitage's present of more than a decade ago, which had been planted against the wall of the library. She straightened as Ross came up, pushing her hair away from her face with a clean forearm.

→'And race you across the beach.' 'Maybe.'

→'Ah yes, but not quite for the first time!'

→She turned, half smiling at something the young man had said, then her face after a moment's hesitated surprise became suddenly radiant.

→At that moment the clear-headed Clowance was discussing foxes.

→'Ross, are you being parental? Not surprising - we shall all be in due course! But Clowance is, I believe, far too clear-headed to be influenced in any way by the claims of eminence or title.'

→'So long as it runs in the right direction.'

→That was Sunday. Canning's beautiful wife was at their country home in Hinckley with their ailing son, so he insisted that Ross should spend the day with him. He told Ross of the King's insanity, of the fact that on December 19th - over a month ago - Spencer Perceval had at last been forced to introduce a Regency Bill. Although people always said the King was improving, the fact remained that the government could not pass a single measure without his consent, and it was difficult to get a rational signature from a man who fancied himself an animal out of Noah's Ark.

→Having lived in the company of gentlefolk for twenty-five years but never been precisely one of them herself (though she enjoyed their company - occasionally - and admired some of their attitudes and came to adopt what she liked of their behaviour as her own), Demelza had razor-sharp perceptions about them. Far more so than Ross, who hardly bothered to notice. And she was not quite sure what to make of Stephen Carrington.

→By the time Christmas came Stephen Carrington had established himself as a personality in the community of Nampara, Mellin and Sawle.

→'I'll see your colonel.'

→The first decade of the century had been a good one, her relationship with Ross back to the early days, warm and full of laughter, intermittently passionate, always friendly. Into that sort of companionship they had been able to draw their two eldest children so that, in spite of occasional disagreements, the accord in the house, the outspokenness, and the unstressed affection was notable. Only lately perhaps, over the last year or so, had an element of unsympathy grown up between Ross and Jeremy.

→It was only a month now from the eleventh anniversary of Elizabeth's death, and to Demelza the time had flown. Indeed, stretching it a bit further, it seemed no time at all since, in the darkest period of their married poverty, she had walked down to the cove and gone out fishing while heavily pregnant with Jeremy, and had nearly lost him and herself as well. Now he was out fishing, tall, slender, nineteen years old, elusive, artistic, not taking life seriously, a harder person altogether to understand than Clowance.

→His immediate wish was to leave Harrow as soon as he could and join the Royal Military College at Great Marlow as a cadet. Ross had tried to persuade him otherwise; he knew enough of the army himself to see the difficulties of a young man without personal money or influence; he also knew Geoffrey Charles's already expensive tastes and thought his nephew would rind the life too hard. Although three years at Harrow had toughened him, he had been much spoiled and cosseted by his mother when he was younger, and some of that influence still showed.

→Geoffrey Charles had taken the death of his mother hard. Ross remembered him as a pale-faced youth calling to see him in London one afternoon and saying that this happening, this loss, had changed his attitude towards his future. He was no longer content to go to Oxford, to be groomed pleasantly for the life of an impoverished squire in the extremest south-west of England. To be under the tutelage of his stepfather, whom he disliked, for the sake of his mother, whom he deeply loved, might be acceptable. The former without the latter was not. He wanted to make his own way in the world and felt he could ask no more favours of Sir George Warleggan.

→The night had worn on, but they dozed only now and then, still exchanging the occasional comment, the quip, the reminiscence. As dawn came nearer they talked more seriously about themselves, about Cornwall, about the Poldarks.