Array Коллектив авторов - 75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

The post was late as usual. They sat outside the house in long chairs under coloured parasols. Only Bobby Kane lay on the turf at Isabel’s feet. It was dull, stifling; the day drooped like a flag.

‘Do you think there will be Mondays in Heaven?’ asked Bobby childishly.

And Dennis murmured, ‘Heaven will be one long Monday.’

But Isabel couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the salmon they had for supper last night. She had meant to have fish mayonnaise for lunch and now…

Moira was asleep. Sleeping was her latest discovery. ‘It’s so wonderful. One simply shuts one’s eyes, that’s all. It’s so delicious.’

When the old ruddy postman came beating along the sandy road on his tricycle one felt the handle-bars ought to have been oars.

Bill Hunt put down his book. ‘Letters,’ he said complacently, and they all waited. But, heartless postman – O malignant world! There was only one, a fat one for Isabel. Not even a paper.

‘And mine’s only from William,’ said Isabel mournfully.

‘From William – already?’

‘He’s sending you back your marriage lines as a gentle reminder.’

‘Does everybody have marriage lines? I thought they were only for servants.’

‘Pages and pages! Look at her! A Lady reading a Letter,’ said Dennis.

‘My darling, precious Isabel.’ Pages and pages there were. As Isabel read on her feeling of astonishment changed to a stifled feeling. What on earth had induced William…? How extraordinary it was… What could have made him…? She felt confused, more and more excited, even frightened. It was just like William. Was it? It was absurd, of course, it must be absurd, ridiculous. ‘Ha, ha, ha! Oh dear!’ What was she to do? Isabel flung back in her chair and laughed till she couldn’t stop laughing.

‘Do, do tell us,’ said the others. ‘You must tell us.’

‘I’m longing to,’ gurgled Isabel. She sat up, gathered the letter, and waved it at them. ‘Gather round,’ she said. ‘Listen, it’s too marvellous. A love-letter!’

‘A love-letter! But how divine!’ ‘Darling, precious Isabel.’ But she had hardly begun before their laughter interrupted her.

‘Go on, Isabel, it’s perfect.’

‘It’s the most marvellous find.’

‘Oh, do go on, Isabel!’

‘God forbid, my darling, that I should be a drag on your happiness.’

‘Oh! oh! oh!’

‘Sh! sh! sh!’

And Isabel went on. When she reached the end they were hysterical: Bobby rolled on the turf and almost sobbed.

‘You must let me have it just as it is, entire, for my new book,’ said Dennis firmly. ‘I shall give it a whole chapter.’

‘Oh, Isabel,’ moaned Moira, ‘that wonderful bit about holding you in his arms!’

‘I always thought those letters in divorce cases were made up. But they pale before this.’

‘Let me hold it. Let me read it, mine own self,’ said Bobby Kane.

But, to their surprise, Isabel crushed the letter in her hand. She was laughing no longer. She glanced quickly at them all; she looked exhausted. ‘No, not just now. Not just now,’ she stammered.

And before they could recover she had run into the house, through the hall, up the stairs into her bedroom. Down she sat on the side of the bed. ‘How vile, odious, abominable, vulgar,’ muttered Isabel. She pressed her eyes with her knuckles and rocked to and fro. And again she saw them, but not four, more like forty, laughing, sneering, jeering, stretching out their hands while she read them William’s letter. Oh, what a loathsome thing to have done. How could she have done it! ‘God forbid, my darling, that I should be a drag on your happiness.’ William! Isabel pressed her face into the pillow. But she felt that even the grave bedroom knew her for what she was, shallow, tinkling, vain…

Presently from the garden below there came voices.

‘Isabel, we’re all going for a bathe. Do come!’

‘Come, thou wife of William!’

‘Call her once before you go, call once yet!’

Isabel sat up. Now was the moment, now she must decide. Would she go with them, or stay here and write to William. Which, which should it be? ‘I must make up my mind.’ Oh, but how could there be any question? Of course she would stay here and write.

‘Titania!’ piped Moira.

‘Isa-bel?’

No, it was too difficult. ‘I’ll – I’ll go with them, and write to William later. Some other time. Later. Not now. But I shall certainly write,’ thought Isabel hurriedly.

And, laughing, in the new way, she ran down the stairs.

So my poem is damned, and immortal fame is not for me! I am nobody forever and ever. Intolerable fate!

Snatching my hat, I dashed down the criticism and rushed out into Broadway, where enthusiastic throngs were crowding to a circus in a side-street nearby, very recently started, and famous for a capital clown.

Presently my old friend Standard rather boisterously accosted me.

‘Well met, Helmstone, my boy! Ah! what’s the matter? Haven’t been committing murder? Ain’t flyingg justice? You look wild!’

‘You have seen it, then!’ said I, of course referring to the criticism.

‘Oh, yes; I was there at the morning performance. Great clown, I assure you. But here comes Hautboy. Hautboy – Helmstone.’

Without having time or inclination to resent so mortifying a mistake, I was instantly soothed as I gazed on the face of the new acquaintance so unceremoniously introduced. His person was short and full, with a juvenile, animated cast to it. His complexion rurally ruddy; his eye sincere, cheery, and gray. His hair alone betrayed that he was not an overgrown boy. From his hair I set him down as forty or more.

‘Come, Standard,’ he gleefully cried to my friend, ‘are you not going to the circus? The clown is inimitable, they say. Come, Mr. Helmstone, too – come both; and circus over, we’ll take a nice stew and punch at Taylor’s.’

The sterling content, good-humor, and extraordinary ruddy, sincere expression of this most singular new acquaintance acted upon me like magic. It seemed mere loyalty to human nature to accept an invitation from so unmistakably kind and honest a heart.

During the circus performance I kept my eye more on Hautboy than on the celebrated clown. Hautboy was the sight for me. Such genuine enjoyment as his struck me to the soul with a sense of the reality of the thing called happiness. The jokes of the clown he seemed to roll under his tongue as ripe magnum-bonums. Now the foot, now the hand, was employed to attest his grateful applause. At any hit more than ordinary, he turned upon Standard and me to see if his rare pleasure was shared. In a man of forty I saw a boy of twelve; and this too without the slightest abatement of my respect. Because all was so honest and natural, every expression and attitude so graceful with genuine good-nature, that the marvelous juvenility of Hautboy assumed a sort of divine and immortal air, like that of some forever youthful god of Greece.

But much as I gazed upon Hautboy, and much as I admired his air, yet that desperate mood in which I had first rushed from the house had not so entirely departed as not to molest me with momentary returns. But from these relapses I would rouse myself, and swiftly glance round the broad amphitheatre of eagerly interested and all-applauding human faces. Hark! claps, thumps, deafening huzzas; the vast assembly seemed frantic with acclamation; and what, mused I, has caused all this? Why, the clown only comically grinned with one of his extra grins.

Then I repeated in my mind that sublime passage in my poem, in which Cleothemes the Argive vindicates the justice of the war. Ay, ay, thought I to myself, did I now leap into the ring there, and repeat that identical passage, nay, enact the whole tragic poem before them, would they applaud the poet as they applaud the clown? No! They would hoot me, and call me doting or mad. Then what does this prove? Your infatuation or their insensibility? Perhaps both; but indubitably the first. But why wail? Do you seek admiration from the admirers of a buffoon? Call to mind the saying of the Athenian, who, when the people vociferously applauded in the forum, asked his friend in a whisper, what foolish thing had he said?