Лучшие рассказы О. Генри = The Best of O. Henry
At eight o’clock the next evening Aunt Ellen took a quaint old gold ring from a moth-eaten case and gave it to Richard.
“Wear it to-night, nephew,” she begged. “Your mother gave it to me. Good luck in love she said it brought. She asked me to give it to you when you had found the one you loved.”
Young Rockwall took the ring reverently and tried it on his smallest finger. It slipped as far as the second joint and stopped. He took it off and stuffed it into his vest pocket, after the manner of man. And then he ’phoned for his cab.
At the station he captured Miss Lantry out of the gadding mob at eight thirty-two.
“We mustn’t keep mamma and the others waiting,” said she.
“To Wallack’s Theatre as fast as you can drive!” said Richard loyally.
They whirled up Forty-second to Broadway, and then down the white-starred lane that leads from the soft meadows of sunset to the rocky hills of morning.
At Thirty-fourth Street young Richard quickly thrust up the trap and ordered the cabman to stop.
“I’ve dropped a ring,” he apologised, as he climbed out. “It was my mother’s, and I’d hate to lose it. I won’t detain you a minute – I saw where it fell.”
In less than a minute he was back in the cab with the ring.
But within that minute a crosstown car had stopped directly in front of the cab. The cabman tried to pass to the left, but a heavy express wagon cut him off. He tried the right, and had to back away from a furniture van that had no business to be there. He tried to back out, but dropped his reins and swore dutifully. He was blockaded in a tangled mess of vehicles and horses.
One of those street blockades had occurred that sometimes tie up commerce and movement quite suddenly in the big city.
“Why don’t you drive on?” said Miss Lantry, impatiently. “We’ll be late.”
Richard stood up in the cab and looked around. He saw a congested flood of wagons, trucks, cabs, vans and street cars filling the vast space where Broadway, Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth street cross one another as a twenty-six inch maiden fills her twenty-two inch girdle. And still from all the cross streets they were hurrying and rattling toward the converging point at full speed, and hurling themselves into the struggling mass, locking wheels and adding their drivers’ imprecations to the clamour. The entire traffic of Manhattan seemed to have jammed itself around them. The oldest New Yorker among the thousands of spectators that lined the sidewalks had not witnessed a street blockade of the proportions of this one.
“I’m very sorry,” said Richard, as he resumed his seat, “but it looks as if we are stuck. They won’t get this jumble loosened up in an hour. It was my fault. If I hadn’t dropped the ring we —”
“Let me see the ring,” said Miss Lantry. “Now that it can’t be helped, I don’t care. I think theatres are stupid, anyway.”
At 11 o’clock that night somebody tapped lightly on Anthony Rockwall’s door.
“Come in,” shouted Anthony, who was in a red dressing-gown, reading a book of piratical adventures.
Somebody was Aunt Ellen, looking like a grey-haired angel that had been left on earth by mistake.
“They’re engaged, Anthony,” she said, softly. “She has promised to marry our Richard. On their way to the theatre there was a street blockade, and it was two hours before their cab could get out of it.
“And oh, brother Anthony, don’t ever boast of the power of money again. A little emblem of true love – a little ring that symbolised unending and unmercenary affection – was the cause of our Richard finding his happiness. He dropped it in the street, and got out to recover it. And before they could continue the blockade occurred. He spoke to his love and won her there while the cab was hemmed in. Money is dross compared with true love, Anthony.”
“All right,” said old Anthony. “I’m glad the boy has got what he wanted. I told him I wouldn’t spare any expense in the matter if —”
“But, brother Anthony, what good could your money have done?”
“Sister,” said Anthony Rockwall. “I’ve got my pirate in a devil of a scrape. His ship has just been scuttled, and he’s too good a judge of the value of money to let drown. I wish you would let me go on with this chapter.”
The story should end here. I wish it would as heartily as you who read it wish it did. But we must go to the bottom of the well for truth.
The next day a person with red hands and a blue polka-dot necktie, who called himself Kelly, called at Anthony Rockwall’s house, and was at once received in the library.
“Well,” said Anthony, reaching for his chequebook, “it was a good bilin’ of soap. Let’s see – you had $5,000 in cash.”
“I paid out $300 more of my own,” said Kelly. “I had to go a little above the estimate. I got the express wagons and cabs mostly for $5; but the trucks and two-horse teams mostly raised me to $10. The motormen wanted $10, and some of the loaded teams $20. The cops struck me hardest – $50 I paid two, and the rest $20 and $25. But didn’t it work beautiful, Mr. Rockwall? I’m glad William A. Brady wasn’t onto that little outdoor vehicle mob scene. I wouldn’t want William to break his heart with jealousy. And never a rehearsal, either! The boys was on time to the fraction of a second. It was two hours before a snake could get below Greeley’s[132] statue.”
“Thirteen hundred – there you are, Kelly,” said Anthony, tearing off a check. “Your thousand, and the $300 you were out. You don’t despise money, do you, Kelly?”
“Me?” said Kelly. “I can lick the man that invented poverty.”
Anthony called Kelly when he was at the door.
“You didn’t notice,” said he, “anywhere in the tie-up, a kind of a fat boy without any clothes on shooting arrows around with a bow, did you?”
“Why, no,” said Kelly, mystified. “I didn’t. If he was like you say, maybe the cops pinched him before I got there.”
“I thought the little rascal wouldn’t be on hand,” chuckled Anthony. “Good-by, Kelly.”
Springtime à la Carte[133]
It was a day in March.
Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable. For the following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without preparation.
Sarah was crying over her bill of fare.
Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card!
To account for this you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters were all out, or that she had sworn ice-cream off during Lent, or that she had ordered onions, or that she had just come from a Hackett[134] matinée. And then, all these theories being wrong, you will please let the story proceed.
The gentleman who announced that the world was an oyster which he with his sword would open made a larger hit than he deserved. It is not difficult to open an oyster with a sword. But did you ever notice any one try to open the terrestrial bivalve with a typewriter? Like to wait for a dozen raw opened that way?
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Примечания
1
The Four Million – at the time when the stories were written, the population of New York City was 4 million people
2
Coney – Coney Island, an amusement area in New York City
3
County Sligo – a county in northeastern Ireland
4
Punch and Judy – popular characters in the Punch-and-Judy puppet show; Punch is brutal and deceitful, and Judy is his wife.
5
palmist – a person who reads character, fate and the future by the lines of the palm
6
segar = cigar
7
the Dagoes – a contemptuous name of the Italians, Spaniards and the Portuguese
8
meerschaum – white clay-like substance, and a pipe made of it
9
idiosyncrasies –idiosyncrasy is a way of behavior or thinking peculiar to a person
10
physiognomy – the study of psychological characters by the features of the face and body structure
11
the Queen of Sheba (10th century BC) – in the Old Testament, a ruler of the Kingdom of Saba in Arabia who visited the legendary King Solomon of Israel to test his wisdom, and brought a caravan of gold, jewels and spices with her
12
a mammoth task = a tremendous task
13
cosmopolite – a person with wide experience of the world, free from national prejudices
14
garçons = waiters (French)
15
mélange = mixture (French)
16
Würzburger – a sort of beer
17
Mauch Chunk – a town in the state of Pennsylvania
18
table d’hôte – here: a set meal with a fixed price
19
Hyderabad – a city in south-central India
20
Kanakas – the Kanaka people, the South Pacific islanders
21
Presto! = Quickly!
22
‘Dixie’ – a popular song written by Daniel Emmett (1815–1904) in 1859; during the American Civil War (1861–1865) it used to be the anthem of the Confederacy of the South.
23
hie = hurry (archaic)
24
Mosby – John Singleton Mosby (1833–1916), a Confederacy guerrilla band leader during the American Civil War
25
Upernavik – a town in Greenland
26
Cincinnati – a town in Ohio
27
Battle Creek – a town in the state of Michigan
28
Yokohama – a city and port southwest of Tokyo in Japan
29
Zulus – the largest ethnic group in South Africa, a branch of the Bantu people
30
Patagonians – residents of Patagonia, a region in southern Argentina
31
the Kaw River – a river in Vietnam
32
Titans – in Greek mythology, giants, the children of Heaven and Earth
33
Maine – the US state in the north-east of the country
34
answers to Lawson – here: court decisions
35
Bohemians – representatives of Bohemia, usually an artistic circle
36
faux pas = a false step, a mistake (French)
37
pounds –pound is a unit of weight equal to 0.4535 kg
38
Palm Beach – a famous resort on the Atlantic coast in Florida
39
cicerone – a guide who describes to sightseers the places of interest
40
Tuskageenial – the word invented by the author from Tuskagee, a city in central Alabama, and genial (kindly, sociable)
41
lambrequins – the Baroque style ornaments; originally the mantling on a helmet to shield the wearer from the sun’s rays.
42
tocsin = poisonous
43
goblin – in Western folklore, a mischievous and malicious spirit attached to a household
44
Stygian – here: terrible; from Styx, in Greek mythology, a river in the underworld.
45
epicedian tears – here: mournful tears
46
Falstaff – a fictional character in Shakespeare’s ‘Henry IV’
47
Momus – in Greek mythology, the god of mockery
48
Avaunt! = Go away! Off with you!
49
Helen – Helen of Troy, a beauty, the cause of the Trojan War
50
Cassiopeia – a constellation in the Milky Way Galaxy
51
balustrade – a row of banisters to support a handrail on a balcony, staircase, etc.
52
Erebus – here: darkness; in Greek mythology, Erebus (Darkness) is the offspring of Chaos.
53
debility – weakness (of health)
54
Wagner – Richard Wagner (1813–1883), a German dramatic composer
55
Waldteufel – Emil Waldteufel (1887–1915), a French pianist and waltz composer
56
Oolong – a famous sort of Chinese tea
57
the Golden Gate – the strait in California between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean
58
Hatteras – Cape Hatteras in North Carolina
59
Cape Horn – a rocky headland on the southern tip of South America in Chile
60
the Labrador – the Labrador current in North Atlantic Ocean, between Canada and Greenland
61
Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) – a famous Florentine sculptor and goldsmith
62
inches – aninch is a unit of length equal to 2.54 cm
63
feet – pl. fromfoot; a unit of length equal to 30.48 cm
64
Astrakhan rug portieres – thick woolen curtains
65
Peoria – a city in central Illinois
66
parkscape – frompark + landscape
67
the smile of the Cheshire cat – a very wide smile(idiom)
68
Paphian = sensual
69
typograph – a typewriter for the blind
70
the Battery – White Point Gardens in South Carolina with monuments and military relics
71
Gotham – a legendary village in Nottinghamshire in England; in English legend, Wise Men of Gotham were wise fools who pretended stupidity to avoid unwanted expenses.
72
Bellevue Hospital – a famous hospital in New York City
73
the Vesuvian Bay – the Bay of Naples in southern Italy with Vesuvius, an active volcano rising high above it
74
Boreas – in Greek mythology, the personification of the north wind
75
bluecoats – here: policemen
76
Blackwell’s – the name of the prison
77
the Riviera – the seacoast on the Mediterranean Sea in the south of France
78
Caesar (100 BC–44 BC) – a Roman ruler, general and dictator, assassinated by the group of conspirators
79
Brutus (85 BC–42 BC) – a Roman politician, one of the leaders in the conspiracy against Julius Caesar
80
Chablis – white wine of northern Burgundy in France, made of Chardonnay grapes
81
Camembert – cheese of Normandy, covered with white mold
82
Yale – a private university in New Haven, one of the oldest universities in the USA, founded in 1701
83
Hartford College – University of Hartford in Connecticut, founded in 1877
84
Arcadia – in Greek and Roman poetry and the Renaissance literature, the blessed country, paradise
85
Hendrik (Henry) Hudson (1565–1611) – an English navigator and explorer whose name was given to a river, a strait and a bay
86
Napoleon III (1808–1873) – president of the Second Republic of France, and since 1852 emperor of France
87
Minerva – in Roman religion, the goddess of handicrafts, profession and arts
88
the Palisades – high vertical rocks along the west side of the Hudson River
89
Yosemite – Yosemite Valley, a picturesque region in east-central California
90
Haydn – Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), a famous Austrian composer of the Classical style in music
91
Carnegie medal – the award given for heroic deeds, established by Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), a famous American industrialist and philanthropist
92
Morgan – John Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913), an American financier and industrialist
93
the Badgers – the nickname of the residents of Wisconsin, the US state in the Midwest
94
Chilcoot – a mountain pass in the Rocky Mountains in Alaska; served as a way to the lands rich in gold.
95
Klondiker – here: a gold prospector; gold was found on the Klondike River in the late 1890s.
96
Pullmans –Pullman is a sleeping car designed by George Pullman (1831–1897), an American industrialist and inventor
97
Mount Saint Elias – a mountain range in the west of Alaska
98
Boadicea (1st century) – an ancient British queen who led the revolt against the Romans
99
the Bronx – the northern borough of the New York City
100
Mr. Kipling – Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), an English writer and poet
101
Bryan – a city in east-central Texas, formally founded in 1855
102
Mont Pelée – an active volcano on one of the Caribbean islands
103
Bearoo – characters in Rudyard Kipling’s tales
104
Snakoo – characters in Rudyard Kipling’s tales
105
Tammanoo – characters in Rudyard Kipling’s tales
106
wootsey squidlums, etc. – pet names
107
Peau d’Espagne – a sort of soft cheese
108
Madison Square Garden – a sports arena in New York City, built in 1891
109
Mendelssohn – Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847), a German composer, conductor and pianist of the Romantic period
110
Epictetus (55–135) – a Greek philosopher; his teaching was later recorded by Arrian, his pupil.
111
prestidigitator = juggler
112
the Campbells –Campbell is the name of the company producing foodstuff
113
sulphur-coloured = yellow
114
bonbon – a sweet
115
laudanum – sedative drug
116
paregoric – analgesic drug
117
glacé = icy, with frozen heart (French)
118
menstruum = solvent
119
socotrine aloes – different medicines
120
valerianate of ammonia – different medicines
121
gum benzoin – different medicines
122
Lochinvar – the main character of Walter Scott’s ballade who stole his beloved one on the very day of her wedding
123
Morpheus – in Greco-Roman mythology, the god of sleep
124
Elysium – in Greek mythology, the paradise to which immortal heroes were sent
125
Mammon – the god of wealth and greed
126
Eureka – here: a brand of soap
127
the Rambler – the name of a ship
128
the Bahamas – an archipelago of nearly 700 islands to the north of Cuba
129
Larchmont – a town in the state of New York
130
Wallack’s – a theatre in New York City, founded in 1852 by James William Wallack (1795–1864), a leading American actor and theatre manager.
131
Mazuma – here: Mammon
132
Greely – Adolphus Washington Greely (1844–1935), an American explorer of the Arctic
133
à la carte = for choice, at smb’s option
134
Hackett – a theatre in New York City, named for James Henry Hackett (1800–1871), a famous American actor.
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