nvs1408: переводы

→He took them down from their racks. They were to him much what Ethne's violin was to her and had stories for his ear alone. He sat with a Remington across his knee and lived over again one long hot day in the hills to the west of Berenice, during which he had stalked a lion across stony, open country, and killed him at three hundred yards just before sunset. Another talked to him, too, of his first ibex shot in the Khor Baraka, and of antelope stalked in the mountains northward of Suakin.

→This one, a thin-stemmed goblet, he had won in a regimental steeple-chase at Colchester; he could remember the day with its clouds and grey sky and the dull look of the ploughed fields between the hedges. That pewter, which stood upon his writing table and which had formed a convenient holder for his pens, when pens had been of use, he had acquired very long ago in his college "fours," when he was a freshman at Oxford. The hoof of a favourite horse mounted in silver made an ornament upon the mantelpiece. His trophies made the room a gigantic diary; he fingered his records of good days gone by and came at last to his guns and rifles.

→Mrs. Adair wanted to hurt, and in spite of Durrance's impenetrable face, she felt that she had succeeded. It was a small sort of compensation for the weeks of mortification which she had endured. There is something which might be said for Mrs. Adair; extenuations might be pleaded, even if no defence was made. For she like Ethne was overtaxed that night. That calm pale face of hers hid the quick passions of the South, and she had been racked by them to the limits of endurance.

→The lapping of the tide against the banks was like the music of a river. It brought to Ethne's mind one particular river which had sung and babbled in her ears when five years ago she had watched out another summer night till dawn. Never had she so hungered for her own country and the companionship of its brown hills and streams. No, not even this afternoon, when she had sat at her window and watched the lights change upon the creek. Donegal had a sanctity for her, it seemed when she dwelled in it to set her in a way apart from and above earthly taints; and as her heart went out in a great longing towards it now, a sudden fierce loathing for the concealments, the shifts and maneuvers which she had practised, and still must practise, sprang up within her.

→She wondered whether Harry, as he sat in the little bare whitewashed café, and strummed out his music to the negroes and Greeks and Arabs gathered about the window, had dreamed, as she had done to-night, that somehow, thin and feeble as it was, some echo of the melody might reach across the world. She knew now for very certain that, however much she might in the future pretend to forget Harry Feversham, it would never be more than a pretence. The vision of the lighted café in the desert town would never be very far from her thoughts, but she had no intention of relaxing on that account from her determination to pretend to forget. The mere knowledge that she had at one time been unjustly harsh to Harry, made her yet more resolved that Durrance should not suffer for any fault of hers.

→"It's a bit of a muddle, isn't it?" Willoughby remarked. "It seems a little rough on Feversham perhaps. It's a little rough on Jack Durrance, too, when you come to think of it." Then he looked at Ethne. He noticed her careful handling of the feather; he remembered something of the glowing look with which she had listened to his story, something of the eager tones in which she had put her questions; and he added, "I shouldn't wonder if it was rather rough on you too, Miss Eustace."

→Shame tingled through all her blood; she sat with her lips set, keeping Willoughby under watch from the corners of her eyes, and waiting to pounce savagely the moment he opened his lips. There had been noticeable throughout his narrative a manner of condescension towards Feversham. "Let him use it again!" thought Ethne. But Captain Willoughby said nothing at all, and Ethne herself broke the silence. "Who of you three first thought of sending the feathers?" she asked aggressively. "Not you?"

→And Ethne was pleading.

→"Something which at all costs she must conceal," she said to herself, and she said it in a voice of exultation. There was contempt too in her tone, contempt for Ethne Eustace, the woman of the open air who was afraid, who shrank from marriage with a blind man, and dreaded the restraint upon her freedom. It was that shrinking which Ethne had to conceal—Mrs. Adair had no doubt of it. "For my part, I am glad," she said, and she was—fiercely glad that blindness had disabled Durrance. For if her opportunity ever came, as it seemed to her now more and more likely to come, blindness reserved him to her, as no man was ever reserved to any woman. So jealous was she of his every word and look that his dependence upon her would be the extreme of pleasure. She watched Ethne and Durrance meet on the lawn at the foot of the terrace steps. She saw them turn and walk side by side across the grass towards the creek. She noticed that Ethne seemed to plead, and in her heart she longed to overhear.

→Ethne was puzzled by the question, but she answered it directly and truthfully. "I was in great distress when I heard of your accident. I was so distressed that at the first I could not think what to do. I came to London and told Laura, since she is my friend, and this was her plan. Of course I welcomed it with all my heart;" and the note of pleading rang in her voice. She was asking Durrance to confirm her words, and he understood that. He turned towards her with a smile.

→"Surely," he returned. "It would be wiser on all counts." And thereupon he asked her suddenly a question of which she did not see the drift. "It was Mrs. Adair, I imagine, who proposed this plan that I should come home to Guessens and that you should stay with her here across the fields?"

→But there was another who only waited an opportunity to engage in it with eagerness. For as Ethne descended the steps Mrs. Adair suddenly dropped the book which she had pretended to resume and ran towards the window. Hidden by the drapery of the curtain she looked out and watched. The smile was still upon her lips, but a fierce light had brightened in her eyes, and her face had the drawn look of hunger.

→Ethne looked about her, as though she was summoning her resources, and even composing her sentences ready for delivery to the man who was walking steadily towards her across the lawn. If there was hesitation upon her part, there was none at all, she noticed, on the part of the blind man. It seemed that Durrance's eyes took in the path which his feet trod, and with the stick which he carried in his hand he switched at the blades of grass like one that carries it from habit rather than for any use. Ethne descended the steps and advanced to meet him. She walked slowly, as if to a difficult encounter.

→She stepped over the threshold of the window on to the terrace. In front of her the lawn stretched to a hedge; on the far side of that hedge a couple of grass fields lifted and fell in gentle undulations; and beyond the fields she could see amongst a cluster of trees the smoke from the chimneys of Colonel Durrance's house. She stood for a little while hesitating upon the terrace. On the left the lawn ran down to a line of tall beeches and oaks which fringed the creek. But a broad space had been cleared to make a gap upon the bank, so that Ethne could see the sunlight on the water and the wooded slope on the farther side, and a sailing-boat some way down the creek tacking slowly against the light wind.

→Ethne shook her head and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. "Not now," she said, and silence again followed her words. Durrance broke it again.

→"No, I do not. One or two words your father let drop. He asked me for news of Feversham the last time that I spoke with him. But I know nothing definite. I should like you to tell me."

→"But you know," she said. "What you said at the window showed that you knew."

→"You once said that you would perhaps tell me why your engagement was broken off."

→For a little while there was silence between them. Then Durrance walked round to the back of her chair.

→"Yes."