И. Маевская: Лучшие истории о любви / Best love stories

“You see, he went away suddenly one day, and never came back. They got his knapsack and bits of things down there still. That’s what stuck in my mind – he never sent for them. His name was Ashes, or something like that.”

“Yes?” said Ashurst once more.

The old man licked his lips.

“She never said nothing, but from that day she went kind of dazed looking; didn’t seem rightly there at all. [105]I never knew a human creature so changed in my life – never. There was another young fellow at the farm – Joe Biddaford his name was, that was in love with her, too; I guess he used to plague her with his attention. She got to look quite wild. I’d see her sometimes in the evening when I was bringing up the calves; there she’d stand in the orchard, under the big apple tree, looking straight before her. ‘Well,’ I used to think, ‘I dunno what it is that’s the matter with you, but you’re looking pitiful!’”

The old man sucked at his pipe reflectively. [106]

“Yes?” said Ashurst.

“I remember one day I said to her: ‘What’s the matter, Megan?’ – her name was Megan David, she came from Wales same as her aunt, old Missis Narracombe. ‘You’re fretting about something. I say. ‘No, Jim,’ she says, ‘I’m not fretting.’ ‘Yes, you are!’ I say. ‘No,’ she says, and the tears came rolling out. ‘You’re crying – what’s that, then?’ I say. She puts her hand over her heart: ‘It hurts me,’ she says; ‘but it will soon be better,’ she says. ‘But if anything should happen to me, Jim, I want to be buried under this apple tree.’ I laughed. ‘What’s going to happen to you?’ I say; ‘don’t you be foolish.’ ‘No,’ she says, ‘I won’t be foolish.’ Well, I know what maids are, and I never thought no more about it, till two days after that, about six in the evening I was coming up with the calves, when I saw something dark lying in the stream, close to that big apple tree. I said to myself: ‘Is that a pig – funny place for a pig to get to!’ and I went up to it, and I saw what it was.”

The old man stopped; his eyes, turned upward, had a bright, suffering look.

“It was the maid, in a little narrow pool there – where I saw the young gentleman bathing once or twice. She was lying on her face in the water. There was a plant of buttercups growing out of the stone just above her head. And when I came to look at her face, it was lovely, beautiful, so calm as a baby’s – wonderful and beautiful it was. When the doctor saw her, he said: ‘She couldn’t have never done it in that little bit of water if she hadn’t been in an ecstasy.’ Ah! and judging from her face, that was just how she was. It made me cry – so beautiful she was! It was June then, but she’d found a little bit of apple-blossom left over somewhere, and stuck it in her hair. That’s why I think she must’ve been in an ecstasy, to go to it jolly, like that. Why! there wasn’t more than a foot and half of water. But I tell you one thing – that meadow’s haunted; I knew it, and she knew it; and no one’ll persuade me as it isn’t. I told them what she said to me about being buried under the apple tree. But I think that turned them – made it look too much as if she’d had it in her mind deliberate; and so they buried her up here. Parson we had then was very particular, he was.”

Again the old man drew his hand over the turf.

“It is wonderful, it seems,” he added slowly, “what maids will do for love. She had a loving-heart; I guess it was broken. But we never knew nothing!”

He looked up as if for approval of his story, but Ashurst had walked past him as if he were not there.

Up on the top of the hill, beyond where he had spread the lunch, over, out of sight, he lay down on his face. So had his virtue been rewarded, and “the Cyprian, [107]” goddess of love, taken her revenge! And before his eyes, dim with tears, came Megan’s face with the spray of apple blossom in her dark, wet hair. ‘What did I do that was wrong?’ he thought. ‘What did I do?’ But he could not answer. Spring, with its rush of passion, its flowers and song – the spring in his heart and Megan’s! Was it just Love seeking a victim! The Greek was right, then – the words of the “Hippolytus” as true today!

The Greek was right! Megan! Poor little Megan – coming over the hill! Megan under the old apple tree waiting and looking! Megan dead, with beauty printed on her!

A voice said:

“Oh, there you are! Look!”

Ashurst rose, took his wife’s sketch, and stared at it in silence.

“Is the foreground right, Frank?”

“Yes.”

“But there’s something wanting, isn’t there?”

Ashurst nodded. Wanting? The apple tree, the singing, and the gold!

And solemnly he put his lips to her forehead. It was his silver-wedding day.

absence– n рассеянность; отсутствие, отлучка

accustomed– adj привыкший, привычный

acquiescent– adj уступчивый, соглашающийся

admirer– n обожатель, поклонник

admit– v допускать, признавать

adorn– v украшать

adroitness– n ловкость; находчивость

afflict– v причинять боль; беспокоить

air– n вид, выражение лица

amber– adj янтарный

amble– v идти неторопливо, лёгким шагом

amorous– adj влюблённый

ante-bellum– adj довоенный

approval– n одобрение

ardent– adj пылкий, пламенный

artlessness– n безыскусность, бесхитростность, простота

awe– n трепет, благоговение

baffle– v ставить в тупик, сбивать с толку

bandage– n бинт; перевязочный материал

barrel– n ствол, дуло

bash– v бить, ударять

beatifically– adv блаженно

becoming– adj подходящий; соответствующий

beech– n бук

belittle– v принижать, умалять

bend– v гнуться, сгибаться, нагибаться

besiege– v осаждать

bewilder– v смущать, приводить в замешательство

bewitch– v заколдовывать, околдовывать

bitter– adj мучительный; резкий

blackbird– n чёрный дрозд