Счастливый человек. Рассказы

W. Somerset MAUGHAM





                THE HAPPY MAN Stories







CLASSICAL LITERATURE



Подготовка текста, комментарии и словарь Ю. В. Князькиной








ШСР©
Санкт-Петербург

2008

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93
   М 74







    Моэм У. Сомерсет
М 74 Счастливый человек. Рассказы: Книга для чтения на английском языке. — СПб.: КАРО, 2008. — 320 с. — (Серия «Classical literature»).

    ISBN 978-5-9925-0217-6

       Уильям Сомерсет Моэм — один из выдающихся английских писателей начала XX века, подаривший миру множество романов, пьес, рассказов.
       В сборнике представлены известные рассказы писателя. Занимательный сюжет, неожиданная и неоднозначная развязка, простой и в то же время изящный язык, легкая ирония делают каждый рассказ уникальным и запоминающимся. В рассказах сквозит интерес автора к исследованию человеческой натуры, тайных страстей, слабостей и скрытых возможностей обычных людей. Делясь своими наблюдениями и размышлениями на тему выбора судьбы и поиска смысла жизни, Моэм не дает однозначных ответов, заставляя читателя задуматься.
       В книге представлен неадаптированный текст на языке оригинала, снабженный комментариями и словарем.
УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93


ISBN 978-5-9925-0217-6

© КАРО, 2008

        LORD MOUNTDRAGO









       Dr. Audlin looked at the clock on his desk. It was twenty minutes to six. He was surprised that his patient was late, for Lord Mountdrago prided himself on his punctuality, he had a sententious way of expressing himself which gave the air of an epigram to a commonplace remark, and he was in the habit of saying that punctuality is a compliment you pay to the intelligent and a rebuke you administer to the stupid. Lord Mountdrago’s appointment was for five-thirty.
       There was in Dr. Audlin s appearance nothing to attract attention. He was tall and spare, with narrow shoulders and something of a stoop; his hair was grey and thin; his long, sallow face deeply lined. He was not more than fifty, but he looked older. His eyes, paleblue and rather large, were weary. When you had been with him for a while you noticed that they moved very little; they remained fixed on your face, but so empty of expression were they that it was no discomfort. They seldom lit up. They gave no clue to his thoughts nor

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   S changed with the words he spoke. If you were of an ж observant turn it might have struck you that he blinked ;□ much less often than most of us. His hands were on g the large side, with long, tapering fingers; they were soft but firm, cool but not clammy. You could never have said what Dr. Audlin wore unless you had made
S a point of looking. His clothes were dark. His tie was ю black. His dress made his sallow lined face paler, and his pale eyes more wan. He gave you the impression of a very sick man. Dr. Audlin was a psycho-analyst. He had adopted the profession by accident and practised it with misgiving. When the war broke out he had not been long qualified and was getting experience at various hospitals; he offered his services to the authorities, and after a time was sent out to France. It was then that he discovered his singular gift. He could allay certain pains by the touch of his cool, firm hands, and by talking to them often induce sleep in men who were suffering from sleeplessness. He spoke slowly. His voice had no particular colour, and its tone did not alter with the words he uttered, but it was musical, soft and lulling. He told the men that they must rest, that they mustn’t worry, that they must sleep; and rest stole into their jaded bones, tranquillity pushed their anxieties away, like a man finding a place for himself on a crowded bench, and slumber fell on their tired eyelids like the light rain of spring upon the fresh-turned earth. Dr. Audlin found that by speaking to men with

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   that low, monotonous voice of his, by looking at them with his pale, quiet eyes, by stroking their weary foreheads with his long firm hands, he could soothe their perturbations, resolve the conflicts that distracted them and banish the phobias that made their lives a torment. Sometimes he effected cures that seemed miraculous. He restored speech to a man who, after being buried under the earth by a bursting shell, had been struck dumb, and he gave back the use of his limbs to another who had been paralysed after a crash in a plane. He could not understand his powers; he was of a sceptical turn, and though they say that in circumstances of this kind the first thing is to believe in yourself, he never quite succeeded in doing that; and it was only the outcome of his activities, patent to the most incredulous observer, that obliged him to admit that he had some faculty, coming from he knew not where, obscure and uncertain, that enabled him to do things for which he could offer no explanation. When the war was over he went to Vienna and studied there, and afterwards to Zurich; and then settled down in London to practise the art he had so strangely acquired. He had been practising now for fifteen years, and had attained, in the speciality he followed, a distinguished reputation. People told one another of the amazing things he had done, and though his fees were high, he had as many patients as he had time to see. Dr. Audlin knew that he had achieved some very extraordinary results; he

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had saved men from suicide, others from the lunatic X asylum, he had assuaged griefs that embittered useful ;□ lives, he had turned unhappy marriages into happy g ones, he had eradicated abnormal instincts and thus delivered not a few from a hateful bondage, he had given health to the sick in spirit; he had done all this, S and yet at the back of his mind remained the suspicion ю that he was little more than a quack.
       It went against his grain¹ to exercise a power that he could not understand, and it offended his honesty to trade on the faith of the people he treated when he had no faith in himself. He was rich enough now to live without working, and the work exhausted him; a dozen times he had been on the point of giving up practice. He knew all that Freud and Jung and the rest of them had written. He was not satisfied; he had an intimate conviction that all their theory was hocus-pocus, and yet there the results were, incomprehensible, but manifest. And what had he not seen of human nature during the fifteen years that patients had been coming to his dingy back room in Wimpole Street ? The revelations that had been poured into his ears, sometimes only too willingly, sometimes with shame, with reservations, with Danger, had long ceased to surprise him. Nothing could shock him any longer. He knew by now that men were liars, he knew how extravagant was their vanity; knew far worse

       ¹ It went against his grain— (рлзг.) Это было не в его характере, не свойственно ему

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   than that about them; but he knew that it was not for him to judge or to condemn. But year by year as these terrible confidences were imparted to him his face grew a little greyer, its lines a little more marked and his pale eyes more weary. He seldom laughed, but now and again when for relaxation he read a novel he smiled. Did their authors really think the men and women they wrote of were like that ? If they only knew how much more complicated they were, how much more unexpected, what irreconcilable elements coexisted within their souls and what dark and sinister contentions afflicted them!
       It was a quarter to six. Of all the strange cases he had been called upon to deal with Dr. Audlin could remember none stranger than that of Lord Mount-drago. For one thing the personality of his patient made it singular. Lord Mountdrago was an able and a distinguished man. Appointed Secretary for Foreign Affairs when still under forty, now after three years in office he had seen his policy prevail. It was generally acknowledged that he was the ablest politician in the Conservative Party, and only the fact that his father was a peer, on whose death he would no longer be able to sit in the House of Commons, made it impossible for him to aim at the premiership. But if in these democratic times it is out of the question for a Prime Minister of England to be in the House of Lords, there was nothing to prevent Lord Mountdrago from continuing to be Secretary for Foreign Affairs in suc
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W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

cessive Conservative administrations and so for long directing the foreign policy of his country.
   Lord Mountdrago had many good qualities. He had intelligence and industry. He was widely travelled, and spoke several languages fluently. From early youth he had specialised in foreign affairs, and had conscientiously made himself acquainted with the political and economic circumstances of other countries. He had courage, insight and determination. He was a good speaker, both on the platform and in the House, clear, precise and often witty. He was a brilliant debater and his gift of repartee was celebrated. He had a fine presence: he was a tall, handsome man, rather bald and somewhat too stout, but this gave him solidity and an air of maturity that were of service to him. As a young man he had been something of an athlete and had rowed in the Oxford boat, and he was known to be one of the best shots in England. At twenty-four he had married a girl of eighteen whose father was a duke and her mother a great American heiress, so that she had both position and wealth, and by her he had had two sons. For several years they had lived privately apart, but in public united, so that appearances were saved, and no other attachment on either side had given the gossips occasion to whisper. Lord Mountdrago indeed was too ambitious, too hardworking, and it must be added too patriotic, to be tempted by any pleasures that might interfere with his career. He had, in short, a

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   great deal to make him a popular and successful figure. He had unfortunately great defects.
      He was a fearful snob. You would not have been surprised at this if his father had been the first holder of the tide. That the son of an ennobled lawyer, a manufacturer or a distiller, should attach an inordinate importance to his rank is understandable. The earldom held by Lord Mountdrago s father was created by Charles II¹ ², and the barony held by the first Earl dated from the Wars of the Roses. For three hundred years the successive holders of the tide had allied themselves with the noblest families of England. But Lord Mountdrago was as conscious of his birth as a nouveau riche¹ is conscious of his money. He never missed an opportunity of impressing it upon others. He had beautiful manners when he chose to display them, but this he did only with people whom he regarded as his equals. He was coldly insolent to those whom he looked upon as his social inferiors. He was rude to his servants and insulting to his secretaries. The subordinate officials in the government offices to which he had been successively attached feared and hated him. His arrogance was horrible. He knew that he was a great deal cleverer than most of the persons he had to do with, and never hesitated to apprise them of the fact. He had no patience with the infirmities of human nature. He

      ¹ Charles II — Чарльз (Карл) II Стюарт (1630-1685) — король Англии, Шотландии и Ирландии

      ² nouveau riche — {фр-) нувориш

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   felt himself born to command and was irritated with people who expected him to listen to their arguments or wished to hear the reasons for his decisions. He was immeasurably selfish. He looked upon any service that was rendered him as a right due to his rank and intelligence and therefore deserving of no gratitude. It never entered his head that he was called upon to do anything for others. He had many enemies: he despised them. He knew no one who merited his assistance, his sympathy or his compassion. He had no friends. He was distrusted by his chiefs, because they doubted his loyalty; he was unpopular with his party, because he was overbearing and discourteous; and yet his merit was so great, his patriotism so evident, his intelligence so solid and his management of affairs so brilliant, that they had to put up with him. And what made it possible to do this was that on occasion he could be enchanting: when he was with persons whom he considered his equals, or whom he wished to captivate, in the company of foreign dignitaries or women of distinction, he could be gay, witty and debonair; his manners then reminded you that in his veins ran the same blood as had run in the veins of Lord Chesterfield¹; he could tell a story with point, he could be natural, sensible and even profound. You were

       ¹ Lord Chesterfield — Филип Дормер Стэнхоуп, лорд Честерфилд, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773) — британский политический деятель, блестящий оратор, знаменитый автор афоризмов

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