Тексты на английском языке

Вид материала

Содержание

The open window (after H. Munro)
Time (by H.E.Bates)

Подобный материал:

1 2 3

The name (by Henry Cecil)

Henry Cecil (1901— ) is an English writer. He was born in Middlesex before the First World War, the author of many successful books: "Alibi for a Judge", "Friends at Court", "Sober as a Judge", and "Settled out of Court".

THE NAME

"GEORGE ELEPHANT!" called the Clerk in Court Number One; and a small man with glasses was brought.

"Are you George Elephant?" asked the Clerk.

"I am."

"You are charged with murder; that you at Golders Green on the 19th day of January 1948, murdered Jane Elephant. How say you, George Elephant, are you guilty or not guilty?"

"Not guilty."

"Very well," said the Judge. "You may sit down."

Except for a few remarks on the curious name of the prisoner, few people were interested in the case. The facts as stated were very simple. On the 20th January the prisoner had walked into a police station. "I have cut my wife's throat," he said. "She's quite dead."

It seemed true enough. Her throat seemed to have been cut with a razor which was near her body.

No defence was put forward at the police court. It seemed a clear case. The prisoner was, however, later defended by Sir Gordon Macintosh, who seldom accepted facts as they seemed. He never accepted more than one case at a time and he went into that case very thoroughly indeed. These are the facts that he discovered about George Elephant.

George was born of ordinary middle-class parents at the end of the nineteenth century. There was no sign of madness in the family. On leaving school George had gone into his father's business, and after that he had married and settled down to an ordinary life. Jane was not a particularly attractive wife. Although she was pretty, she grew fat as she grew older. She took a good deal of pleasure in laughing at George, and one of the subjects of which she never seemed to get tired was his last name. George was a little ashamed of his name, but he had never had the courage to change it.

I have known a man called Sidebottom very reasonably change his name to Edgedale when he had grown impatient of the telephone calls of jokers.

Usually, however, the owners of unfortunate names just bear them. George had certainly suffered a great deal. When he first went to school and was asked his name in front of the other boys, he replied, "George Elephant."

"Olliphant?" said the master.

"No, sir, Elephant."

"What, Elephant? Like the animals?"

"Yes, sir, like the animals."

After that at school he was called by the names of all known, and some unknown, animals. George was modest, and boys at school are merciless. He was not happy there and was thankful when he left. But his troubles did not end when he left school. Like Mr. Sidebottom, he received many calls from the people who have nothing better to do than to use the telephone as a means of annoyance.

You Smiths and Robinsons, who have never suffered in this way, may smile. These unwelcome attentions from impolite strangers may seem to you unimportant. But change your name to a foolish one — even for two weeks — and see what happens to you. Some of the Elephant family did, in fact, change their name to Olliphant; but George's father said that what was good enough for his father was also good enough for him. He kept the name Elephant.

George, indeed, had no pride in his name but, for no exact reason, was unwilling to change it. So he suffered the smiles of shopgirls when he gave his name, and the continual jokes of the people on the telephone. He even thought of giving up the telephone, but he needed it and so he kept it.

When he married Jane he had hoped she would make his difficulties lighter. But Jane did not mind being called Elephant; in fact she told everyone her new name, particularly if her husband was near. Even when she was being loving she used to call him "my elephant boy", and so he was not allowed to forget.

When Sir Gordon Macintosh had discovered these facts, he had no doubt at all of the proper defence to raise in the court. He immediately had George examined by famous doctors. He claimed that either the prisoner had been driven mad by his early sufferings and his wife's behaviour; or that he had entirely lost control of himself.

In putting forward the defence of madness he did not say that the prisoner had imagined he was really an elephant. He simply said that the man's mind had given way. It was proved that George was a quiet little man who had never offered violence to anyone. Relations and friends said that his behaviour towards his wife was without fault.

"Why," said Sir Gordon, "should this mild little man kill his wife unless he was mad? I listened to all your names as they were read out in court. You will pardon me if I say that they were all ordinary names. How happy you must be that they are. I do not, however, ask you to find the prisoner not guilty out of thankfulness or pity. I ask you to listen the words of famous doctors. They will tell you that the mind of the prisoner has been affected from his earliest childhood by this extraordinary name. These doctors have discovered that the boy's nurses and teachers used to make him angry by laughing at his name. At that time he probably did not know the fact, but the effect on his mind was increased by the boys at school, by those whom he met in business, by jokers, and finally by his unfortunate wife. These doctors are ready to say that, in their opinion, the mind of the accused man may have been in such a state that he was not, at the time when he killed his wife, fully responsible for his actions."

Sir Gordon said much more of the same kind and then called his witnesses. The doctors said that the accused was not mad, but that his mind was very much affected by jokes about his name. They thought that he would not have killed his wife if a policeman had been in the room at the time. They agreed that he realized that it was wrong to kill a wife. But the doctors for the defence said that the prisoner might have been made so angry by his wife's jokes that he could not control himself.

George was not found quilty of murder, but he was sent to prison with hard labour for seven years. That, however, was not the end of the matter, because the case by this time caused great public interest.

A law was suggested to make it a serious offence to use the telephone for making jokes about names. Letters were written to the newspapers by those who had unusual names. Doctors wrote articles, and the case of George Elephant became quite famous. In the end, so much sympathy was shown for George and so much pressure was put on the Government, that George's time in prison was reduced from seven years to three. This meant that George would be set free after a little more than two years if he behaved himself well.

Two years later, just before he was let out, a priest arrived at the prison where George was. He had a talk with George.

"Before you leave," said the visitor, "would you like to say anything to me in secret, so that you may feel, when you leave these walls, that you are starting life again with a clean soul?"

George hesitated. "You can trust me, you know", said the man. "And I feel that there may be something — even something quite small — that is a load on your mind. Perhaps you would like to lay down the load, and perhaps I can help you. Start telling me in your own words the story of your crime; for although there may have been an excuse for it, it was a crime. Tell me, for example, what was it that actually led you to kill your wife?"

"Well, as a matter of fact," said George, "I was fond of another woman."

^ The open window (after H. Munro)

"My aunt will come down in a few minutes, Mr Nuttel," said a girl of fifteen, showing him into the sitting-room. Mr Nuttel was a young painter who had recently had a nervous breakdown. The doctors had told him that he should go away for a holiday. They warned him, however, against crowded resorts and recommended a complete rest in a quiet country-place. So here he was, in a little village, with letters of introduction from his sister to some of the people she knew.

"Some of the people there are quite nice," his sister had said to him. "I advise you to call on Mrs Sappleton as soon as you arrive. I owe the wonderful holiday I had to her."

"Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the girl when they were sitting comfortably on the sofa.

"No, I'm afraid I don't," answered Mr Nuttel. "I've never been here before. My sister stayed here four years ago, you know, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here."

"Then you know nothing about my aunt, do you?" asked the girl.

"Only her name and address," said the visitor.

"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child.

"Her tragedy?" asked Mr Nuttel.

"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," went on the girl, pointing to a large French window.

"It's quite warm for this time of year," said Mr Nuttel. "But has that window anything to do with the tragedy?"

"Exactly three years ago my aunt's husband and her two young brothers walked out through that window. They went shooting and never came back. When they were crossing the river their boat probably turned over and they were all drowned. Their bodies were never found. That was the most horrible part of the tragedy." Here the girl stopped. There were tears in her eyes and she drew a handkerchief out of her pocket. "Three years have passed, but my poor aunt still thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown dog that was drowned with them, and walk in through that window just as they always did. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it's quite dark. Poor dear aunt, she can't understand that they've left forever. She's growing worse day by day, so let me give you some advice. Don't be surprised at anything she says or does: she will start telling you all over again how they went out — her husband, with his coat over his arm, and her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why don't you come?...' as she once told me. You know, sometimes, on quiet evenings like this, I almost get a feeling that they will all walk in through that window, and the whole family will be gathered in here again." The young girl finished her sad story. There was a long pause, and Mr Nuttel was glad when Mrs Sappleton at last entered the room.

"I'm sorry I'm late," she said, "but I hope my niece has entertained you well."

"Yes, she's been very amusing," said Mr Nuttel.

"D'you mind the open window?" asked Mrs Sappleton. "My husband and brothers will soon be home from shooting and they always come into the house this way." And she went on speaking gaily about shooting. After what Mr Nuttel had just heard, he looked worried.

"The doctors told me," he said, trying to change the subject, "to have a rest here and to avoid anything that would make me feel nervous."

"Did they?" said Mrs Sappleton in a voice which showed that she was not at all interested in what Mr Nuttel was saying. She never took her eyes off the open window and suddenly cried out:

"Here they are at last! Just in time for tea. How tired they look."

Mr Nuttel looked at the girl and saw that she was looking out through the open window with horror in her eyes. Mr Nuttel turned round slowly in his seat, looked in the same direction and saw three figures walking across the garden towards the window. They all carried guns and one of them had a coat over his shoulder. A tired brown dog was following them. Noiselessly they approached the house, and then a young voice began to sing. "Bertie, why don't you come?"

Mr Nuttel seized his hat and ran out of the house like mad.

"Here we are, my dear," said Mrs Sappleton's husband, coming in through the window. "We've enjoyed ourselves very much. I wonder what made that gentleman run out so quickly when we came up? Who is he?"

"A very strange young man, called Nuttel. He could only talk about his illness. He didn't say a single interesting thing. I don't understand why he ran out that way without saying good-bye," said his wife.

"I think it was the dog," said the niece calmly. "He told me that he was afraid of dogs. Once when he was attacked by a pack of dogs somewhere in India, he was so frightened that he started running like mad, and finding himself in a cemetery, climbed down into a newly-dug grave, where he had to spend the night. Since then he has always been afraid of dogs."

She was very good at inventing stories and did it artistically.

8. ^ Time (by H.E.Bates)

H.E.Bates (1905—1974), a modern English writer, was born in 1905 in Rushden, Northampton, England. He was educated at a grammar school, then worked on a local newspaper. Disliking the drudgery of journalism, he became a clerk in a leather warehouse. His new job gave him leisure to write fiction and in 1925 he attained his majority and publication of his first novel together. The author of a number of novels, plays and essays H. E. Bates is also a prolific and widely anthologized short-story writer.

TIME

Sitting on an iron seat fixed about the body of a great chestnut tree breaking into pink-flushed blossom, two old men gazed dumbly at the sunlit emptiness of a town square.

The morning sun burned in a sky of marvellous blue serenity, making the drooping leaves of the tree most brilliant and the pale blossoms expand to fullest beauty. The eyes of the old men were also blue, but the brilliance of the summer sky made a mockery of the dim and somnolent light in them. Their thin white hair and drooping skin, their faltering lips and rusted clothes, the huddling bones of their bodies had come to winter. Their hands tottered, their lips were wet and dribbling, and they stared with a kind of earnest vacancy, seeing the world as a stillness of amber mist. They were perpetually silent, for the deafness of one made speech a ghastly effort of shouting and misinterpretation. With their worn sticks between their knees and their worn hands knotted over their sticks they sat as though time had ceased to exist for them.

Nevertheless every movement across the square was an event. Their eyes missed nothing that came within sight. It was as if the passing of every vehicle held for them the possibility of catastrophe; the appearance of a strange face was a revolution; the apparitions of young ladies in light summer dresses gliding on legs of shellpink silk had on them something of the effect of goddesses on the minds of young heroes. There were, sometimes, subtle changes of light in their eyes. 138

Across the square, they observed an approaching figure. They watched it with a new intensity, exchanging also, for the first time, a glance with one another. For the first time also they spoke.

"Who is it?" said one.

"Duke, ain't it?"

"Looks like Duke," the other said. "But I can't see that far."

Leaning forward on their sticks, they watched the approach of this figure with intent expectancy. He, too, was old. Beside him, indeed, it was as if they were adolescent. He was patriarchal. He resembled a Biblical prophet, bearded and white and immemorial. He was timeless.

But though he looked like a patriarch he came across the square with the haste of a man in a walking race. He moved with a nimbleness and airiness that were miraculous. Seeing the old men on the seat he waved his stick with an amazing gaiety at them. It was like the brandishing of a youthful sword. Ten yards away he bellowed their names lustily in greeting.

"Well, Reuben boy! Well, Shepherd!"

They mumbled somberly in reply. He shouted stentoriously about the weather, wagging his white beard strongly. They shifted stiffly along the seat and he sat down. A look of secret relief came over their dim faces, for he had towered above them like a statue in silver and bronze.

"Thought maybe you warn't coming," mumbled Reuben.

"Ah! been for a sharp walk!" he half-shouted. "A sharp walk." They had not the courage to ask where he had walked, but in his clear brisk voice he told them, and deducing that he could not have travelled less than six or seven miles they sat in gloomy silence, as though shamed. With relief they saw him fumble in his pockets and bring out a bag of peppermints, black-and-white balls sticky and strong from the heat of his strenuous body and having one by one popped peppermints into their mouths they sucked for a long time with toothless and dumb solemnity, contemplating the sunshine.

As they sucked, the two old men waited for Duke to speak, and they waited like men awaiting an oracle, since he was, in their eyes, a masterpiece of a man. Long ago, when they had been napkinned and at the breast, he had been a man with a beard, and before they had reached their youth he had passed into a lusty maturity. All their lives they had felt infantile beside him.

Now, in old age, he persisted in shaming them by the lustiness of his achievements and his vitality. He had the secret of devilish perpetual youth. To them the world across the square was veiled in sunny mistiness, but Duke could detect the swiftness of a rabbit on a hill-side a mile away.

They heard the sounds of the world as though through a stone wall, but he could hear the crisp bark of a fox in another parish. They were condemned to an existence of memory because they could not read, but Duke devoured the papers. He had an infinite knowledge of the world and the freshest affairs of men. He brought them, every morning, news of earthquakes in Peru, of wars in China, of assassinations in Spain, of scandals among the clergy. He understood the obscurest movements of politicians and explained to them the newest laws of the land. They listened to him with the devoutness of worshippers listening to a preacher, regarding him with awe and believing in him with humble astonishment. There were times when he lied to them blatantly. They never suspected.

As they sat there, blissfully sucking, the shadow of the chestnut tree began to shorten, its westward edge creeping up, like a tide, towards their feet. Beyond, the sun continued to blaze with unbroken brilliance on the white square. Swallowing the last smooth grain of peppermint, Reuben wondered aloud what time it could be.

"Time?" said Duke. He spoke ominously. "Time?" he repeated.

They watched his hand solemnly uplift itself and vanish into his breast. They had no watches. Duke alone could tell them the passage of time while appearing to mock at it himself. Very slowly he drew out an immense watch, held it out at length on its silver chain, and regarded it steadfastly.

They regarded it also, at first with humble solemnity and then with quiet astonishment. They leaned forward to stare at it. Their eyes were filled with a great light of unbelief. The watch had stopped.

The three old men continued to stare at the watch in silence. The stopping of this watch was like the stopping of some perfect automaton. It resembled almost the stopping of time itself. Duke shook the watch urgently. The hands moved onwards for a second or two from half-past three and then were dead again. He lifted it to his ear and listened. It was silent.

For a moment or two longer the old man sat in lugubrious contemplation. The watch, like Duke, was a masterpiece, incredibly ancient, older even than Duke himself. They did not know how often he had boasted to them of its age and efficiency, its beauty and pricelessness. They remembered that it had once belonged to his father, that he had been offered incredible sums for it, that it had never stopped since the battle of Waterloo.

Finally Duke spoke. He spoke with the mysterious air of a man about to unravel a mystery, "Know what't is?"

They could only shake their heads and stare with the blankness of ignorance and curiosity. They could not know.

Duke made an ominous gesture, almost a flourish, with the hand that held the watch.

"It's the lectric."

They stared at him with dim-eyed amazement.

"It's the lectric" he repeated. "The lectric in me body."

Shepherd was deaf. "Eh?" he said.

"The lectric," said Duke significantly, in a louder voice.

"Lectric?" They did not understand, and they waited.

The oracle spoke at last, repeating with one hand the ominous gesture that was like a flourish.

"It stopped yesterday. Stopped in the middle of my dinner," he said. He was briefly silent. "Never stopped as long as I can remember. Never. And then stopped like that, all of a sudden, just at pudden-time. Couldn't understand it. Couldn't understand it for the life of me."

"Take it to the watchmaker's?" Reuben said.

"I did," he said. "I did. This watch is older'n me, I said, and it's never stopped as long as I can remember. So he squinted at it and poked it and that's what he said." "What?"

"It's the lectric, he says, that's what it is. It's the lectric — the lectric in your body. That's what he said. The lectric."

"Lectric light?"

"That's what he said. Lectric. You're full o'lectric, he says. You go home and leave your watch on the shelf and it'll go again. So I did."

The eyes of the old men seemed to signal intense questions. There was an ominous silence. Finally, with the watch still in his hand, Duke made an immense flourish, a gesture of serene triumph.

"And it went," he said. "It went!"

The old men murmured in wonder.

"It went all right. Right as a cricket! Beautiful!"

The eyes of the old men flickered with fresh amazement. The fickleness of the watch was beyond the weakness of their ancient comprehension. They groped for understanding as they might have searched with their dim eyes for a balloon far up in the sky. Staring and murmuring they could only pretend to understand.

"Solid truth," said Duke. "Goes on the shelf but it won't go on me. It's the lectric."

"That's what licks me," said Reuben, "the lectric."

"It's me body," urged Duke. "It's full of it."

"Lectric light?"

"Full of it. Alive with it."

He spoke like a man who had won a prize. Bursting with glory, he feigned humility. His white beard wagged lustily with pride, but the hand still bearing the watch seemed to droop with modesty.

"It's the lectric," he boasted softly.

They accepted the words in silence. It was as though they began to understand at last the lustiness of Duke's life, the nimbleness of his mind, the amazing youthful-ness of his patriarchal limbs.

The shadow of the chestnut tree had dwindled to a small dark circle about their seat. The rays of the sun were brilliantly perpendicular. On the chestnut tree itself the countless candelabra of blossoms were a pure blaze of white and rose. A clock began to chime for noon.

Duke, at that moment, looked at his watch, still lying in his hand.

He stared with instant guilt. The hands had moved miraculously to four o'clock, and in the stillness of the summer air he could hear the tick of wheels.

With hasty gesture of resignation he dropped the watch into his pocket again. He looked quickly at the old men, but they were sunk in sombre meditation. They had not seen or heard.

Abruptly he rose. "That's what it is," he said. "The, lectric." He made a last gesture as though to indicate that he was the victim of some divine manifestation. "The lectric," he said.

He retreated nimbly across the square in the hot sunshine and the old men sat staring after him with the innocence of solemn wonder. His limbs moved with the haste of a clockwork doll, and he vanished with incredible swiftness from sight.

The sun had crept beyond the zenith and the feet of the old men were bathed in sunshine.

Blog

Тексты на английском языке

Содержание