Битва жизни

УДК 
372.8
ББК 
81.2 Англ-93
Д 45

ISBN 978-5-9925-1141-3

 
Диккенс, Чарльз.
Д45 
Битва жизни : книга для чтения на английском языке. — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 2016. — 
160 с. — (Classical Literature).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1141-3.

Предлагаем вниманию читателей рождественскую повесть классика английской и мировой литературы Ч. Диккенса «Битва жизни».
Две сестры, Марион и Грейс, провожают Альфреда, возлюбленного младшей, Марион, на обучение. Он должен вернуться спустя три года и жениться на ней. Но буквально за несколько минут до встречи с любимым девушка исчезает…
В книге представлен текст повести с комментариями и 
словарем.
УДК 372.8 
ББК 81.2 Англ-93

© КАРО, 2016

Part the First

Once upon a time, it matters little when, and 
in stalwart England, it matters little where, a fierce 
battle was fought. It was fought upon a long summer 
day when the waving grass was green. Many a 
wild flower formed by the Almighty Hand to be 
a perfumed goblet for the dew, felt its enamelled 
cup filled high with blood that day, and shrinking 
dropped. Many an insect deriving its delicate colour 
from harmless leaves and herbs, was stained anew 
that day by dying men, and marked its frightened 
way with an unnatural track. The painted butterfly 
took blood into the air upon the edges of its wings. 
The stream ran red. The trodden ground became 
a quagmire, whence, from sullen pools collected 
in the prints of human feet and horses’ hoofs, the 
one prevailing hue still lowered and glimmered at 
the sun.
Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the sights 
the moon beheld upon that field, when, coming 

up above the black line of distant rising ground, 
softened and blurred at the edge by trees, she rose 
into the sky and looked upon the plain, strewn with 
upturned faces that had once at mothers’ breasts 
sought mothers’ eyes, or slumbered happily. Heaven 
keep us from a knowledge of the secrets whispered 
afterwards upon the tainted wind that blew across 
the scene of that day’s work and that night’s death 
and suffering! Many a lonely moon was bright upon 
the battle-ground, and many a star kept mournful 
watch upon it, and many a wind from every quarter 
of the earth blew over it, before the traces of the 
fight were worn away.
They lurked and lingered for a long time, but 
sur vived in little things; for, Nature, far above the 
evil passions of men, soon recovered Her serenity, 
and smiled upon the guilty battle-ground as she 
had done before, when it was innocent. The larks 
sang high above it; the swallows skimmed and 
dipped and flitted to and fro; the shadows of the 
flying clouds pursued each other swiftly, over grass 
and corn and turnip field and wood, and over roof 
and church spire in the nestling town among the 
trees, away into the bright distance on the borders 
of the sky and earth, where the red sunsets faded. 
Crops were sown, and grew up, and were gathered 
in; the stream that had been crimsoned, turned 

a watermill; men whistled at the plough; gleaners 
and haymakers were seen in quiet groups at work; 
sheep and oxen pastured; boys whooped and called, 
in fields, to scare away the birds; smoke rose from 
cottage chimneys; sabbath bells rang peacefully; 
old people lived and died; the timid creatures of 
the field, the simple flowers of the bush and garden, 
grew and withered in their destined terms: and all 
upon the fierce and bloody battle-ground, where 
thousands upon thousands had been killed in the 
great fight. But, there were deep green patches in the 
growing corn at first, that people looked at awfully. 
Year after year they re-appeared; and it was known 
that underneath those fertile spots, heaps of men 
and horses lay buried, indiscriminately, enriching 
the ground. The husbandmen who ploughed those 
places, shrunk from the great worms abounding 
there; and the sheaves they yielded, were, for many 
a long year, called the Battle Sheaves, and set apart; 
and no one ever knew a Battle Sheaf to be among the 
last load at a Harvest Home. For a long time, every 
furrow that was turned, revealed some fragments of 
the fight. For a long time, there were wounded trees 
upon the battle-ground; and scraps of hacked and 
broken fence and wall, where deadly struggles had 
been made; and trampled parts where not a leaf or 
blade would grow. For a long time, no village girl 

would dress her hair or bosom with the sweetest 
flower from that field of death: and after many a 
year had come and gone, the berries growing there, 
were still believed to leave too deep a stain upon the 
hand that plucked them.
The Seasons in their course, however, though 
they passed as lightly as the summer clouds themselves, obliterated, in the lapse of time1, even these 
remains of the old conflict; and wore away such 
legendary traces of it as the neighbouring people 
carried in their minds, until they dwindled into 
old wives’ tales, dimly remembered round the 
winter fire, and waning every year. Where the wild 
flowers and berries had so long remained upon the 
stem untouched, gardens arose, and houses were 
built, and children played at battles on the turf. The 
wounded trees had long ago made Christmas logs, 
and blazed and roared away. The deep green patches 
were no greener now than the memory of those 
who lay in dust below. The ploughshare still turned 
up from time to time some rusty bits of metal, but it 
was hard to say what use they had ever served, and 
those who found them wondered and disputed. An 
old dinted corselet, and a helmet, had been hanging 
in the church so long, that the same weak half blind 

1 in the lapse of time — (уст.) с течением времени

old man who tried in vain to make them out above 
the whitewashed arch, had marvelled at them as a 
baby. If the host slain upon the field, could have been 
for a moment reanimated in the forms in which 
they fell, each upon the spot that was the bed of his 
untimely death, gashed and ghastly soldiers would 
have stared in, hundreds deep, at household door 
and window; and would have risen on the hearths 
of quiet homes; and would have been the garnered 
store of barns and granaries; and would have started 
up between the cradled infant and its nurse; and 
would have floated with the stream, and whirled 
round on the mill, and crowded the orchard, and 
burdened the meadow, and piled the rick-yard high 
with dying men. So altered was the battle ground, 
where thousands upon thousands had been killed 
in the great fight.
Nowhere more altered, perhaps, about a hundred 
years ago, than in one little orchard attached to an 
old stone house with a honeysuckle porch; where, 
on a bright autumn morning, there were sounds 
of music and laughter, and where two girls danced 
merrily together on the grass, while some half dozen 
peasant women standing on ladders, gathering the 
apples from the trees, stopped in their work to look 
down, and share their enjoyment. It was a pleasant, 
lively, natural scene; a beautiful day, a retired spot; 

and the two girls, quite unconstrained and careless, 
danced in the freedom and gaiety of their hearts.
If there were no such thing as display in the 
world, my private opinion is, and I hope you agree 
with me, that we might get on a great deal better 
than we do, and might be infinitely more agreeable 
company than we are. It was charming to see how 
these girls danced. They had no spectators but the 
apple-pickers on the ladders. They were very glad to 
please them, but they danced to please themselves 
(or at least you would have supposed so); and you 
could no more help admiring, than they could help 
dancing. How they did dance!
Not like opera dancers. Not at all. And not like 
Madame Anybody’s finished pupils. Not the least. 
It was not quadrille dancing, nor minuet dancing, 
nor even country dance dancing. It was neither in 
the old style, nor the new style, nor the French style, 
nor the English style: though it may have been, by 
accident, a trifle in the Spanish style, which is a 
free and joyous one, I am told, deriving a delightful 
air of off-hand inspiration, from the chirping little 
castanets. As they danced among the orchard 
trees, and down the groves of stems and back 
again, and twirled each other lightly round and 
round, the influence of their airy motion seemed 
to spread and spread, in the sun lighted scene, like 

an expanding circle in the water. Their streaming 
hair and fluttering skirts, the elastic grass beneath 
their feet, the boughs that rustled in the morning 
air — the flashing leaves, the speckled shadows 
on the soft green ground — the balmy wind that 
swept along the landscape, glad to turn the distant 
windmill, cheerily — everything between the two 
girls, and the man and team at plough upon the 
ridge of land, where they showed against the sky as 
if they were the last things in the world — seemed 
dancing too.
At last, the younger of the dancing sisters, out 
of breath, and laughing gaily, threw herself upon a 
bench to rest. The other leaned against a tree hard 
by. The music, a wandering harp and fiddle, left 
off with a flourish, as if it boasted of its freshness; 
though the truth is, it had gone at such a pace, and 
worked itself to such a pitch of competition with 
the dancing, that it never could have held on, half 
a minute longer. The apple-pickers on the ladders 
raised a hum and murmur of applause, and then, 
in keeping with the sound, bestirred themselves 
to work again like bees.
The more actively, perhaps, because an elderly 
gentleman, who was no other than Doctor Jeddler 
himself — it was Doctor Jeddler’s house and orchard, you should know, and these were Doctor 

Jeddler’s daughters — came bustling out to see what 
was the matter, and who the deuce played music on 
his property, before breakfast. For he was a great 
philosopher, Doctor Jeddler, and not very musical.
‘Music and dancing TO-DAY!’ said the Doctor, 
stopping short, and speaking to himself. ‘I thought 
they dreaded to day. But it’s a world of contradictions. 
Why, Grace, why, Marion!’ he added, aloud, ‘is the 
world more mad than usual this morning?’
‘Make some allowance for it1, father, if it be,’ 
replied his younger daughter, Marion, going close 
to him, and looking into his face, ‘for it’s somebody’s 
birthday.’
‘Somebody’s birthday, Puss!’ replied the Doctor. 
‘Don’t you know it’s always somebody’s birth day? 
Did you never hear how many new performers 
enter on this — ha! ha! ha! — it’s impossible to 
speak gravely of it — on this preposterous and 
ridiculous business called Life, every minute?’
‘No, father!’
‘No, not you, of course; you’re a woman — 
almost,’ said the Doctor. ‘By-the-by,’ and he looked 
into the pretty face, still close to his, ‘I suppose it’s 
YOUR birthday.’

1 Make some allowance for it — (разг.) Учтите; примите во внимание