Alex_ander: переводы

→Presently from the garden below there came voices.
"Isabel, we're all going for a bathe. Do come!"
"Come, thou wife of William!"
"Call her once before you go, call once yet!"
Isabel sat up. Now was the moment, now she must decide. Would she go with them, or stay here and write to William. Which, which should it be? "I must make up my mind." Oh, but how could there be any question? Of course she would stay here and write.
"Titania!" piped Moira.
"Isa-bel?"

→But, to their surprise, Isabel crushed the letter in her hand. She was laughing no longer. She glanced quickly at them all; she looked exhausted. "No, not just now. Not just now," she stammered.
And before they could recover she had run into the house, through the hall, up the stairs into her bedroom. Down she sat on the side of the bed. "How vile, odious, abominable, vulgar," muttered Isabel. She pressed her eyes with her knuckles and rocked to and fro. And again she saw them, but not four, more like forty, laughing, sneering, jeering, stretching out their hands while she read them William's letter. Oh, what a loathsome thing to have done. How could she have done it! God forbid, my darling, that I should be a drag on your happiness. William! Isabel pressed her face into the pillow. But she felt that even the grave bedroom knew her for what she was, shallow, tinkling, vain. . . .

→And Isabel went on. When she reached the end they were hysterical: Bobby rolled on the turf and almost sobbed.
"You must let me have it just as it is, entire, for my new book," said Dennis firmly. "I shall give it a whole chapter."
"Oh, Isabel," moaned Moira, "that wonderful bit about holding you in his arms!"
"I always thought those letters in divorce cases were made up. But they pale before this."
"Let me hold it. Let me read it, mine own self," said Bobby Kane.

→"I'm longing to," gurgled Isabel. She sat up, gathered the letter, and waved it at them. "Gather round," she said. "Listen, it's too marvellous. A love-letter!"
"A love-letter! But how divine!" Darling, precious Isabel. But she had hardly begun before their laughter interrupted her.
"Go on, Isabel, it's perfect."
"It's the most marvellous find."
"Oh, do go on, Isabel!"
God forbid, my darling, that I should be a drag on your happiness.
"Oh! oh! oh!"
"Sh! sh! sh!"

→My darling, precious Isabel. Pages and pages there were. As Isabel read on her feeling of astonishment changed to a stifled feeling. What on earth had induced William . . .? How extraordinary it was. . . . What could have made him . . .? She felt confused, more and more excited, even frightened. It was just like William. Was it? It was absurd, of course, it must be absurd, ridiculous. "Ha, ha, ha! Oh dear!" What was she to do? Isabel flung back in her chair and laughed till she couldn't stop laughing.
"Do, do tell us," said the others. "You must tell us."

→"And mine's only from William," said Isabel mournfully.
"From William–already?"
"He's sending you back your marriage lines as a gentle reminder."
"Does everybody have marriage lines? I thought they were only for servants."
"Pages and pages! Look at her! A Lady reading a Letter," said Dennis.

→Moira was asleep. Sleeping was her latest discovery. "It's so wonderful. One simply shuts one's eyes, that's all. It's so delicious."
When the old ruddy postman came beating along the sandy road on his tricycle one felt the handle-bars ought to have been oars.
Bill Hunt put down his book. "Letter," he said complacently, and they all waited. But, heartless postman–O malignant world! There was only one, a fat one for Isabel. Not even a paper.

→The post was late as usual. They sat outside the house in long chairs under coloured parasols. Only Bobby Kane lay on the turf at Isabel's feet. It was dull, stifling; the day drooped like a flag.
"Do you think there will be Mondays in Heaven?" asked Bobby childishly.
And Dennis murmured, "Heaven will be one long Monday."
But Isabel couldn't help wondering what had happened to the salmon they had for supper last night. She had meant to have fish mayonnaise for lunch and now . . .

→Fields, trees, hedges streamed by. They shook through the empty, blind-looking little town, ground up the steep pull to the station.
The train was in. William made straight for a first-class smoker, flung back into the corner, but this time he let the papers alone. He folded his arms against the dull, persistent gnawing, and began in his mind to write a letter to Isabel.
. . . . .

→"Oh, please, do let me," said Isabel. "I want to, really." They walked together silently. William felt there was nothing to say now.
"There," said Isabel triumphantly, setting the suit-case down, and she looked anxiously along the sandy road. "I hardly seem to have seen you this time," she said breathlessly. "It's so short, isn't it? I feel you've only just come. Next time–" The taxi came into sight. "I hope they look after you properly in London. I'm so sorry the babies have been out all day, but Miss Neil had arranged it. They'll hate missing you. Poor William, going back to London." The taxi turned. "Goodbye!" She gave him a little hurried kiss; she was gone.

→But after supper they were all so tired they could do nothing but yawn until it was late enough to go to bed. . . .
It was not until William was waiting for his taxi the next afternoon that he found himself alone with Isabel. When he brought his suit-case down into the hall, Isabel left the others and went over to him. She stooped down and picked up the suit-case. "What a weight!" she said, and she gave a little awkward laugh. "Let me carry it! To the gate."
"No, why should you?" said William. "Of course, not. Give it to me."

→But a moment later William was forgotten. Moira Morrison began wondering what colour one's legs really were under water.
"Mine are the palest, palest mushroom colour."
Bill and Dennis ate enormously. And Isabel filled glasses, and changed plates, and found matches, smiling blissfully. At one moment, she said, "I do wish, Bill, you'd paint it."
"Paint what?" said Bill loudly, stuffing his mouth with bread.
"Us," said Isabel, "round the table. It would be so fascinating in twenty years' time."
Bill screwed up his eyes and chewed. "Light's wrong," he said rudely, "far too much yellow"; and went on eating. And that seemed to charm Isabel, too.

→The others had reached the house. "I say, Isabel," called Bobby, "would you like me to wear my Nijinsky dress to-night?"
"No," said Isabel, "nobody's going to dress. We're all starving. William's starving, too. Come along, mes amis, let's begin with sardines."
"I've found the sardines," said Moira, and she ran into the hall, holding a box high in the air.
"A Lady with a Box of Sardines," said Dennis gravely.
"Well, William, and how's London?" asked Bill Hunt, drawing the cork out of a bottle of whisky.
"Oh, London's not much changed," answered William.
"Good old London," said Bobby, very hearty, spearing a sardine.

→The gate swung open and shut. William moved on the terrace; they had seen him. "Hallo, William!" And Bobby Kane, flapping his towel, began to leap and pirouette on the parched lawn. "Pity you didn't come, William. The water was divine. And we all went to a little pub afterwards and had sloe gin."

→"I think its up to Moira to use her little arts and wiles."
A tragic moan from Moira.
"We ought to have a gramophone for the weekends that played 'The Maid of the Mountains.'"
"Oh no! Oh no!" cried Isabel's voice. "That's not fair to William. Be nice to him, my children! He's only staying until to-morrow evening."
"Leave him to me," cried Bobby Kane. "I'm awfully good at looking after people."

→William sat down in one of the arm-chairs. Nowadays, when one felt with one hand down the sides, it wasn't to come upon a sheep with three legs or a cow that had lost one horn, or a very fat dove out of the Noah's Ark. One fished up yet another little paper-covered book of smudged-looking poems. . . . He thought of the wad of papers in his pocket, but he was too hungry and tired to read. The door was open; sounds came from the kitchen. The servants were talking as if they were alone in the house. Suddenly there came a loud screech of laughter and an equally loud "Sh!" They had remembered him. William got up and went through the French windows into the garden, and as he stood there in the shadow he heard the bathers coming up the sandy road; their voices rang through the quiet.

→"Hillo, William!" She was at the station after all, standing just as he had imagined, apart from the others, and–William's heart leapt–she was alone.
"Hallo, Isabel!" William stared. He thought she looked so beautiful that he had to say something, "You look very cool."
"Do I?" said Isabel. "I don't feel very cool. Come along, your horrid old train is late. The taxi's outside." She put her hand lightly on his arm as they passed the ticket collector. "We've all come to meet you," she said. "But we've left Bobby Kane at the sweet shop, to be called for."

→And he remembered the holidays they used to have, the four of them, with a little farm girl, Rose, to look after the babies. Isabel wore a jersey and her hair in a plait; she looked about fourteen. Lord! how his nose used to peel! And the amount they ate, and the amount they slept in that immense feather bed with their feet locked together. . . . William couldn't help a grim smile as he thought of Isabel's horror if she knew the full extent of his sentimentality.
. . . . .

→"Isabel!"
"Yes, yes, it's true in a way," said Isabel quickly. "You think they are another bad sign. Oh, I know you do. I feel it," she said softly, "every time you come up the stairs. But we couldn't have gone on living in that other poky little hole, William. Be practical, at least! Why, there wasn't enough room for the babies even."

→"Ah, you know!" He stood in the middle of the room and he felt a stranger. At that Isabel wheeled round quickly and faced him.
"Oh, William!" she cried imploringly, and she held up the hair-brush: "Please! Please don't be so dreadfully stuffy and–tragic. You're always saying or looking or hinting that I've changed. Just because I've got to know really congenial people, and go about more, and am frightfully keen on–on everything, you behave as though I'd–" Isabel tossed back her hair and laughed–"killed our love or something. It's so awfully absurd"–she bit her lip–"and it's so maddening, William. Even this new house and the servants you grudge me."