Лучшие истории о любви / Best love stories
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“That’s all right for you, Dele,” said Joe, “but how about me? Do you think I’m going to let you hustle for wages while I wander in the regions of high art? By no means! I guess I can sell papers or lay cobblestones, [23] and bring in a dollar or two.”
Delia came and hung about his neck.
“Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily as millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn’t think of leaving Mr. Magister.”
23
lay cobblestones – укладывать
“All right,” said Joe. “But I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn’t Art. But you’re a trump and a dear [24] to do it.”
“When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard,” said Delia.
“Magister praised the sky in that sketch I made in the park,” said Joe. “And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his window. I may sell one if the right kind of a wealthy idiot sees them.”
“I’m sure you will,” said Delia, sweetly. “And now let’s be thankful for Gen. Pinkney and this veal roast.”
24
you’re a trump and a dear – ты умница и прелесть
During all of the next week the Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe was enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he was doing in Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfasted, praised and kissed at 7 o’clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was most times 7 o’clock when he returned in the evening.
At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but weary, triumphantly tossed three five-dollar bills on the table.
“Sometimes,” she said, “Clementina exhausts me. I’m afraid she doesn’t practise enough, and I have to tell her the same things so often. And then she always dresses entirely in white, and that does get monotonous. But Gen. Pinkney is the dearest old man! I wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at the piano – he is a widower, you know – and stands there pulling his white goatee. ‘And how are the semiquavers and the demisemiquavers [25] progressing?’ he always asks.
25
the semiquavers and the demisemiquavers – шестнадцатые и тридцать вторые (ноты)
“Clementina has such a funny little cough. I hope she is stronger than she looks. Oh, I really am getting attached to her, she is so gentle and highbred. Gen. Pinkney’s brother was once Minister to Bolivia.”
And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five, a two and a one, and laid them beside Delia’s earnings.
“Sold that watercolour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria,” he announced.
“Don’t joke with me,” said Delia, “not from Peoria!”
“All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a woollen scarf. He saw the sketch in Tinkle’s window and thought it was a windmill at first. He bought it anyhow, though. He ordered another one to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess Art is still in it.”
“I’m so glad you’ve kept on,” said Delia, heartily. “You’re bound to win, dear. Thirty – three dollars! We never had so much to spend before. We’ll have oysters tonight.”
“ And filet mignon with champignons,” said Joe. “Where is the olive fork?”
On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He spread his $18 on the parlour table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands.
Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages.
“How is this?” asked Joe after the usual greetings. Delia laughed, but not very joyously.
“Clementina,” she explained, “insisted upon a Welsh rabbit [26] after her lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at 5 in the afternoon. I know Clementina isn’t in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry! But Gen. Pinkney! – Joe, that old man nearly went distracted. [27] He rushed downstairs and sent somebody – they said the furnaceman [28] or somebody in the basement – out to a drug store for some oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn’t hurt so much now.”
26
Welsh rabbit –
27
nearly went distracted – чуть с ума не сошёл
28
furnaceman – истопник, оператор печи
“What’s this?” asked Joe, taking the hand tenderly and pulling at some white strands beneath the bandages.
“It’s something soft,” said Delia, “that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch?” She had seen the money on the table.
“Did I?” said Joe; “just ask the man from Peoria. He isn’t sure but he thinks he wants another landscape and a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Dele?”
“Five o’clock, I think,” said Dele, sadly. “The iron – I mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen Gen. Pinkney, Joe, when – ”
“Sit down here a moment, Dele,” said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat beside her and put his arm across her shoulders.
“What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?” he asked.
She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of Gen. Pinkney; but finally down went her head and out came the truth and tears.
“I couldn’t get any pupils,” she confessed. “And I couldn’t bear to have you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twenty-fourth street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don’t you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You’re not angry, are you, Joe? And if I hadn’t got the work you mightn’t have sold your sketches to that man from Peoria.”
“He wasn’t from Peoria,” said Joe, slowly.
“Well, it doesn’t matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe – and – kiss me, Joe – and what made you ever suspect that I wasn’t giving music lessons to Clementina?”
“I didn’t,” said Joe, “until tonight. And I wouldn’t have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine room [29] this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. [30] I’ve been firing the engine [31] in that laundry for the last two weeks.”
29
engine room – котельная
30
smoothing-iron – утюг (нагреваемый на огне)
31
I’ve been firing the engine in that laundry – я топлю котёл в этой прачечной
“And then you didn’t – “
“My purchaser from Peoria,” said Joe, “and Gen. Pinkney are both creations of the same art – but you wouldn’t call it either painting or music.”
And then they both laughed, and Joe began:
“When one loves one’s Art no service seems – ”
But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. “No,” she said – “just ‘When one loves.’”
The last of the belles
F. Scott Fitzgerald