75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

There lay a young man, fast asleep – sleeping so soundly, so deeply, that he was far, far away from them both. Oh, so remote, so peaceful. He was dreaming. Never wake him up again. His head was sunk in the pillow, his eyes were closed; they were blind under the closed eyelids. He was given up to his dream. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful. While they were laughing and while the band was playing, this marvel had come to the lane. Happy… happy… All is well, said that sleeping face. This is just as it should be. I am content.

But all the same you had to cry, and she couldn’t go out of the room without saying something to him. Laura gave a loud childish sob.

‘Forgive my hat,’ she said.

And this time she didn’t wait for Em’s sister. She found her way out of the door, down the path, past all those dark people. At the corner of the lane she met Laurie.

He stepped out of the shadow. ‘Is that you, Laura?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mother was getting anxious. Was it all right?’

‘Yes, quite. Oh, Laurie!’ She took his arm, she pressed up against him.

‘I say, you’re not crying, are you?’ asked her brother.

Laura shook her head. She was.

Laurie put his arm round her shoulder. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said in his warm, loving voice. ‘Was it awful?’

‘No,’ sobbed Laura. ‘It was simply marvellous. But Laurie—’ She stopped, she looked at her brother. ‘Isn’t life,’ she stammered, ‘isn’t life—’ But what life was she couldn’t explain. No matter. He quite understood.

‘Isn’t it, darling?’ said Laurie.

Marriage à la Mode [400] (Katherine Mansfield)

On his way to the station William remembered with a fresh pang of disappointment that he was taking nothing down to the kiddies. Poor little chaps! It was hard lines on them. Their first words always were as they ran to greet him, ‘What have you got for me, daddy?’ and he had nothing. He would have to buy them some sweets at the station. But that was what he had done for the past four Saturdays; their faces had fallen last time when they saw the same old boxes produced again.

And Paddy had said, ‘I had red ribbing on mine bee-fore!’

And Johnny had said, ‘It’s always pink on mine. I hate pink.’

But what was William to do? The affair wasn’t so easily settled. In the old days, of course, he would have taken a taxi off to a decent toyshop and chosen them something in five minutes. But nowadays they had Russian toys, French toys, Serbian toys – toys from God knows where. It was over a year since Isabel had scrapped the old donkeys and engines and so on because they were so ‘dreadfully sentimental’ and ‘so appallingly bad for the babies’ sense of form.’

‘It’s so important,’ the new Isabel had explained, ‘that they should like the right things from the very beginning. It saves so much time later on. Really, if the poor pets have to spend their infant years staring at these horrors, one can imagine them growing up and asking to be taken to the Royal Academy.’

And she spoke as though a visit to the Royal Academy was certain immediate death to any one…

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said William slowly. ‘When I was their age I used to go to bed hugging an old towel with a knot in it.’

The new Isabel looked at him, her eyes narrowed, her lips apart.

‘Dear William! I’m sure you did!’ She laughed in the new way.

Sweets it would have to be, however, thought William gloomily, fishing in his pocket for change for the taxi-man. And he saw the kiddies handing the boxes round – they were awfully generous little chaps – while Isabel’s precious friends didn’t hesitate to help themselves…

What about fruit? William hovered before a stall just inside the station. What about a melon each? Would they have to share that, too? Or a pineapple, for Pad, and a melon for Johnny? Isabel’s friends could hardly go sneaking up to the nursery at the children’s meal-times. All the same, as he bought the melon William had a horrible vision of one of Isabel’s young poets lapping up a slice, for some reason, behind the nursery door.

With his two very awkward parcels he strode off to his train. The platform was crowded, the train was in. Doors banged open and shut. There came such a loud hissing from the engine that people looked dazed as they scurried to and fro. William made straight for a first-class smoker, stowed away his suit-case and parcels, and taking a huge wad of papers out of his inner pocket, he flung down in the corner and began to read.

‘Our client moreover is positive… We are inclined to reconsider… in the event of—’ Ah, that was better. William pressed back his flattened hair and stretched his legs across the carriage floor. The familiar dull gnawing in his breast quietened down. ‘With regard to our decision—’ He took out a blue pencil and scored a paragraph slowly.