Нижегородский государственный лингвистический
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Текст 8 (F. Scott Fitzgerald Winter Dreams) … And one day it came to pass that Mr. Jones – himself and not his ghost – came up to Dexter with tears in his eyes and said that Dexter was the best caddy in the club, and wouldn’t he decide not to quit if Mr. Jones made it worth his while, because every other – – caddy in the club lost one ball a hole for him – regularly – ‘No, sir,’ said Dexter decisively, ‘I don’t want to caddy any more.’ Then, after a pause: ‘I’m too old.’ ‘You’re not more than fourteen. Why the devil did you decide just this morning that you wanted to quit? You promised that next week you’d go over to the state tournament with me.’ ‘I decided I was too old.’ Dexter handed in his ‘A Class’ badge, collected what money was due him from the caddy master, and walked home to Black Bear Village. ‘The best – – caddy I ever saw,’ shouted Mr. Mortimer Jones over a drink that afternoon. ‘Never lost a ball! Willing! Intelligent! Quiet! Honest! Grateful!’ The little girl who had done this was eleven – beautifully ugly as little girls are apt to be who are destined after a few years to be inexpressibly lovely and bring no end of misery to a great number of men. The spark, however, was perceptible. There was a general ungodliness in the way her lips twisted down at the corners when she smiled, and in the – Heaven help us! – in the almost passionate quality of her eyes. Vitality is born early in such women. It was utterly in evidence now, shining through her thin frame in a sort of glow. She had come eagerly out on to the course at nine o’clock with a white linen nurse and five small new golf-clubs in a white canvas bag which the nurse was carrying. When Dexter first saw her she was standing by the caddy house, rather ill at ease and trying to conceal the fact by engaging her nurse in an obviously unnatural conversation graced by startling and irrelevant grimaces from herself. ‘Well, it’s certainly a nice day, Hilda,’ Dexter heard her say. She drew down the corners of her mouth, smiled, and glanced furtively around, her eyes in transit falling for an instant on Dexter. Then to the nurse: ‘Well, I guess there aren’t very many people out here this morning, are there? The smile again – radiant, blatantly artificial – convincing. ‘I don't know what we’re supposed to do now,’ said the nurse, looking nowhere in particular. ‘Oh, that’s all right. I’ll fix it up.’ Dexter stood perfectly still, his mouth slightly ajar. He knew that if he moved forward a step his stare would be in her line of vision – if he moved backward he would lose his full view of her face. For a moment he had not realized how young she was. Now he remembered having seen her several times the year before – in bloomers. Suddenly, involuntarily, he laughed, a short abrupt laugh – then, startled by himself, he turned and began to walk quickly away. ‘Boy!’ Dexter stopped. ‘Boy –’ Beyond question he was addressed. Not only that, but he was treated to that absurd smile, that preposterous smile – the memory of which at least a dozen men were to carry into middle age… The situation was resolved by the fortuitous appearance of the caddy-master, who was appealed to immediately by the nurse. ‘Miss Jones is to have a little caddy, and this one says he can’t go.’ ‘Mr. McKenna said I was to wait here till you came,’ said Dexter quickly. ‘Well, he’s here now.’ Miss Jones smiled cheerfully at the caddy-master. Then she dropped her bag and set off at a haughty mince toward the first tee. ‘Well?’ The caddy-master turned to Dexter. ‘What you standing there like a dummy for? Go pick up the young lady’s clubs.’ ‘I don’t think I’ll go out to-day,’ said Dexter. ‘You don’t – ’ ‘I think I’ll quit.’ The enormity of his decision frightened him. He was a favorite caddy, and the thirty dollars a month he earned through the summer were not to be made elsewhere around the lake. But he had received a strong emotional shock, and his perturbation required a violent and immediate outlet… When he was twenty-three Mr. Hart – one of the gray-haired men who like to say ‘Now there’s a boy’ – gave him a guest card to the Sherry Island Golf Club for a week-end. It was a curious day, slashed abruptly with fleeting, familiar impressions. One minute he had the sense of being a trespasser — in the next he was impressed by the tremendous superiority he felt toward Mr. Т. А. Hedrick, who was a bore and not even a good golfer any more. Then, because of a ball Mr. Hart lost near the fifteenth green, an enormous thing happened. While they were marching the stiff grasses of the rough there was a clear call of ‘Fore!’ from behind a hill in their rear. And as they all turned abruptly from their search a bright new ball sliced abruptly over the hill and Mr. T. A. Hedrick in the abdomen. ‘By Gad!’ cried Mr. T. A. Hedrick, ‘they ought to put some of these crazy women off the course. It’s getting to be outrageous’ … ‘That Judy Jones!’ remarked Mr. Hedrick on the next tee, as they waited — some moments — for her to play on ahead. ‘All she needs is to be turned up and spanked for six months and then to be married off to an old-fashioned cavalry captain.’ ‘My God, she’s good-looking!’ said Mr. Sandwood, who was just over thirty. ‘Good-looking!’ cried Mr. Hedrick contemptuously, ‘she always looks as if she wanted to be kissed! Turning those big cow-eyes on every calf in town!’ It was doubtful if Mr. Hedrick intended a reference to the maternal instinct. ‘She’d play pretty good golf if she’d try,’ said Mr. Sandwood. ‘She has no form,’ said Mr. Hedrick solemnly. ‘She has a nice figure,’ said Mr. Sandwood. ‘Better thank the Lord she doesn’t drive a swifter ball,’ said Mr. Hart, winking at Dexter. Later in the afternoon the sun went down with a riotous swirl of gold and varying blues and scarlets, and left the dry, rustling night of Western summer. Dexter watched from the veranda of the Golf Club, watched the even overlap of the waters in the little wind, silver molasses under the harvest-moon. Then the moon held a finger to her lips and the lake became a clear pool, pale and quiet. Dexter put on his bathing-suit and swam out to the farthest raft, where he stretched dripping on the wet canvas of the springboard. Текст 9 (O. Henry Lost on Dress Parade) Mr. Towers Chandler was pressing his evening suit in his hall bedroom. One iron was heating on a small gas stove; the other was being pushed vigorously back and forth to make the desirable crease that would be seen later on extending in straight lines from Mr. Chandler’s patent leather shoes to the edge of his low-cut vest. So much of the hero’s toilet may be entrusted to our confidence. The remainder may be guessed by those whom genteel poverty has driven to ignoble expedient. Our next view of him shall be as he descends the steps of his lodging-house immaculately and correctly clothed; calm, assured, handsome-in appearance the typical New York young clubman setting out, slightly bored, to inaugurate the pleasures of the evening. Chandler’s honorarium was $18 per week… Out of each week’s earnings Chandler set aside $1. At the end of each ten weeks with the extra capital thus accumulated he purchased one gentleman’s evening from the bargain counter of stingy old Father Time. He arrayed himself in the regalia of millionaires and presidents; he took himself to the quarter where life is brightest and showiest, and there dined with taste and luxury. With ten dollars a man may, for a few hours, play the wealthy idler to perfection. The sum is ample for a well considered meal, a bottle bearing a respectable label, commensurate tips, a smoke, cab fare, and the ordinary etceteras. This one delectable evening culled from each dull seventy was to Chandler a source of renascent bliss. To the society bud comes but one debut, it stands alone sweet in her memory when her hair has whitened, but to Chandler each ten weeks brought a joy as keen, as thrilling, as new as the first had been. To sit among bon vivants under palms in the swirl of concealed music, to look upon the habitués of such a paradise and to be looked upon by them – what is a girl’s first dance and short-sleeved tulle compared with this? Up Broadway Chandler moved with the vespertine dress parade. For this evening he was an exhibit as well as a gazer. For the next sixty-nine evenings he would be dining in cheviot and worsted at dubious table d’hotes, at whirlwind lunch counters, on sandwiches and beer in his hall bedroom. He was willing to do that, for he was a true son of the great city of razzle-dazzle and to him one evening in the limelight made up for many dark ones. Chandler protracted his walk until the Forties began to intersect the great and glittering primrose way, for the evening was yet young, and when one is of the beau monde only one day in seventy, one loves to protract the pleasure. Eyes bright, sinister, curious, admiring, provocative, alluring were bent upon him, for his garb and air proclaimed him a devote to the hour of solace and pleasure. At a certain corner he came to a standstill, proposing to himself the question of turning back toward the showy and fashionable restaurant in which he usually dined on the evenings of his special luxury. Just then a girl scuttled lightly around the corner, slipped on a patch of icy snow and fell plump upon the sidewalk. Chandler assisted her to her feet with instant and solicitous courtesy. The girl hobbled to the wall of the building, leaned against it and thanked him demurely. ‘I think my ankle is strained,’ she said. ‘It twisted when I fell.’ ‘Does it pain you much?’ inquired Chandler. ‘Only when I rest my weight upon it. I think I will be able to walk in a minute or two.’ ‘If I can be of any further service,’ suggested the young man, ‘I will call a cab, or –’ ‘Thank, you,’ said the girl, softly but heartily. ‘I am sure you need not trouble yourself any further. It was so awkward of me. And my shoe heels are horridly commonsense; I can’t blame them at all.’ …‘I think,’ he said to her, with frank gravity, ‘that your foot needs a longer rest than you suppose. Now, I am going to suggest a way in which you can give it that and at the same time do me a favor. I was on my way to dine all by my lonely self when you came tumbling round the corner. You come with me and we’ll have a cozy dinner and a pleasant talk together, and by that time your game ankle will carry you home very nicely, I am sure.’ …When the two were established at a well-appointed table, with a promising waiter hovering in attendance, Chandler began to experience the real joy that this regular outing always brought to him… Then it was that the Madness of Manhattan, the Frenzy of Fuss and Feathers, the Bacillus of Brag, the Provincial Plague of Pose seized upon Towers Chandler. He was on Broadway, surrounded by pomp and style, and there were eyes to look at him. On the stage of that comedy he had assumed to play the one-night part of a butterfly of fashion and an idler of means and taste. He was dressed for the part, and all his good angels had not the power to prevent him from acting it. So he began to prate to Miss Marian of clubs, of teas, of golf and riding and kennels and cotillions and tours abroad and threw out hints of a yacht lying at Larchmont. He could see that she was vastly impressed by this vague talk, so he endorsed his pose by random insinuations concerning great wealth, and mentioned familiarly a few names that are handled reverently by the proletariat. It was Chandler’s short little day, and he was wringing from it the best that could be had, as he saw it. And yet once or twice he saw the pure gold of this girl shine through the mist that his egotism had raised between him and all objects. ‘This way of living that you speak of, she said, ‘sounds so futile and purposeless. Haven’t you work to do in the world that might interest you more?’ ‘My dear Miss Marian,’ he exclaimed. ‘Work! Think of dressing every day for dinner, of making half a dozen calls in an afternoon – with a policeman at every corner ready to jump into your auto and take you to the station, if you get up any greater speed than a donkey cart’s gait. We do-nothings are the hardest workers in the land.’ The dinner was concluded, the waiter generously feed, and the two walked out to the corner where they had met. Miss Marian walked very well now; her limp was scarcely noticeable. … In his chilly bedroom Chandler laid away his evening clothes for a sixty-nine days’ rest. He went about it thoughtfully. ‘That was a stunning girl,’ he said to himself. ‘She’s all right, too. I’d be sworn, even if she does have to work. Perhaps if I’d told her the truth instead of all that razzle-dazzle we might – but, confound it. I had to play up to my clothes.’ Thus spoke the brave who was born and reared in the wigwams of the tribe of the Manhattans. The girl, after leaving her entertainer, sped swiftly cross-town until she arrived at a handsome and sedate mansion two squares to the east, facing on that avenue which is the highway of Mammon and the auxiliary gods. Here she entered hurriedly and ascended to a room where a handsome young lady in an elaborate house dress was looking anxiously out the window. ‘Oh, you madcap!’ exclaimed the elder girl, when the other entered. ‘When will you quit frightening us this way? It’s two hours since you ran out in that rag of an old dress and Marie’s hat. Mamma has been so alarmed. She sent Louis in the auto to try to find you. You are a bad, thoughtless Puss.’ ‘Don’t scold, Sis. My costume and Marie’s hat were just what I needed. Every one thought I was a shop-girl, I am sure.’ Текст 10 (O. Henry The Gift of the Magi) One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Delia counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas. There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Delia did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating. While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the look-out for the mendicancy squad. In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name ‘Mr. James Dillingham Young’. The ‘Dillingham’ had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20 the letters of ‘Dillingham’ looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called ‘Jim’ and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Delia. Which is all very good. Delia finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $ 1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling – something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim. There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $ 8 flat. A very thin mid very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Delia, being slender, had mastered the art. Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length. Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Delia’s hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Delia would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy. So now Delia’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet. On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street. Where she stopped the sign read: ‘Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds’. One flight up Delia ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the ‘Sofronie’. ‘Will you buy my hair?’ asked Delia. ‘I buy hair,’ said Madame. ‘Take your hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.’ Down rippled the brown cascade. ‘Twenty dollars,’ said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand. ‘Give it to me quick,’ said Delia. Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present. She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation – as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value – the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain. When Delia reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends – a mammoth task. Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically. ‘If Jim doesn’t kill me,’ she said to herself, ‘before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do – oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?’… The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two – and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves. Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Delia, and there was an impression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face. |
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