The Battle of Life. A Love Story. Чарльз Диккенс

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СКАЧАТЬ as being no business of hers, and took her arms and legs as they came, and allowed them to dispose of themselves just as it happened, is to render faint justice to her equanimity. Her dress was a prodigious pair of self-willed shoes, that never wanted to go where her feet went; blue stockings; a printed gown of many colours, and the most hideous pattern procurable for money; and a white apron. She always wore short sleeves, and always had, by some accident, grazed elbows, in which she took so lively an interest that she was continually trying to turn them round and get impossible views of them. In general, a little cap perched somewhere on her head; though it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied in other subjects, by that article of dress; but from head to foot she was scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed her laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called a busk), and wrestle as it were with her garments, until they fell into a symmetrical arrangement.

      Such, in outward form and garb, was Clemency Newcome; who was supposed to have unconsciously originated a corruption of her own christian name, from Clementina (but nobody knew, for the deaf old mother, a very phenomenon of age, whom she had supported almost from a child, was dead, and she had no other relation); who now busied herself in preparing the table; and who stood, at intervals, with her bare red arms crossed, rubbing her grazed elbows with opposite hands, and staring at it very composedly, until she suddenly remembered something else it wanted, and jogged off to fetch it.

      “Here are them two lawyers a-coming, Mister!” said Clemency, in a tone of no very great good-will.

      “Aha!” cried the Doctor, advancing to the gate to meet them. “Good morning, good morning! Grace, my dear! Marion! Here are Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs. Where’s Alfred?”

      “He’ll be back directly, father, no doubt,” said Grace. “He had so much to do this morning in his preparations for departure, that he was up and out by daybreak. Good morning, gentlemen.”

      “Ladies!” said Mr. Snitchey, “For Self and Craggs,” who bowed, “good morning. Miss,” to Marion, “I kiss your hand.” Which he did. “And I wish you” – which he might or might not, for he didn’t look, at first sight, like a gentleman troubled with many warm outpourings of soul, in behalf of other people, “a hundred happy returns of this auspicious day.”

      “Ha ha ha!” laughed the Doctor thoughtfully, with his hands in his pockets. “The great farce in a hundred acts!”

      “You wouldn’t, I am sure,” said Mr. Snitchey, standing a small professional blue bag against one leg of the table, “cut the great farce short for this actress, at all events, Doctor Jeddler.”

      “No,” returned the Doctor. “God forbid! May she live to laugh at it, as long as she can laugh, and then say, with the French wit, ‘The farce is ended; draw the curtain.’”

      “The French wit,” said Mr. Snitchey, peeping sharply into his blue bag, “was wrong, Doctor Jeddler; and your philosophy is altogether wrong, depend upon it, as I have often told you. Nothing serious in life! What do you call law?”

      “A joke,” replied the Doctor.

      “Did you ever go to law?” asked Mr. Snitchey, looking out of the blue bag.

      “Never,” returned the Doctor.

      “If you ever do,” said Mr. Snitchey, “perhaps you’ll alter that opinion.”

      Craggs, who seemed to be represented by Snitchey, and to be conscious of little or no separate existence or personal individuality, offered a remark of his own in this place. It involved the only idea of which he did not stand seised and possessed in equal moieties with Snitchey; but he had some partners in it among the wise men of the world.

      “It’s made a great deal too easy,” said Mr. Craggs.

      “Law is?” asked the Doctor.

      “Yes,” said Mr. Craggs, “everything is. Everything appears to me to be made too easy, now-a-days. It’s the vice of these times. If the world is a joke (I am not prepared to say it isn’t), it ought to be made a very difficult joke to crack. It ought to be as hard a struggle, Sir, as possible. That’s the intention. But it’s being made far too easy. We are oiling the gates of life. They ought to be rusty. We shall have them beginning to turn, soon, with a smooth sound. Whereas they ought to grate upon their hinges, Sir.”

      Mr. Craggs seemed positively to grate upon his own hinges, as he delivered this opinion; to which he communicated immense effect – being a cold, hard, dry man, dressed in grey and white, like a flint; with small twinkles in his eyes, as if something struck sparks out of them. The three natural kingdoms, indeed, had each a fanciful representative among this brotherhood of disputants: for Snitchey was like a magpie or a raven (only not so sleek), and the Doctor had a streaked face like a winter-pippin, with here and there a dimple to express the peckings of the birds, and a very little bit of pigtail behind, that stood for the stalk.

      As the active figure of a handsome young man, dressed for a journey, and followed by a porter, bearing several packages and baskets, entered the orchard at a brisk pace, and with an air of gaiety and hope that accorded well with the morning, – these three drew together, like the brothers of the sister Fates, or like the Graces most effectually disguised, or like the three weird prophets on the heath, and greeted him.

      “Happy returns, Alf,” said the Doctor, lightly.

      “A hundred happy returns of this auspicious day, Mr. Heathfield,” said Snitchey, bowing low.

      “Returns!” Craggs murmured in a deep voice, all alone.

      “Why, what a battery!” exclaimed Alfred, stopping short, “and one – two – three – all foreboders of no good, in the great sea before me. I am glad you are not the first I have met this morning: I should have taken it for a bad omen. But Grace was the first – sweet, pleasant Grace – so I defy you all!”

      “If you please, Mister, I was the first you know,” said Clemency Newcome. “She was a walking out here, before sunrise, you remember. I was in the house.”

      “That’s true! Clemency was the first,” said Alfred. “So I defy you with Clemency.”

      “Ha, ha, ha! – for Self and Craggs,” said Snitchey. “What a defiance!”

      “Not so bad a one as it appears, may be,” said Alfred, shaking hands heartily with the Doctor, and also with Snitchey and Craggs, and then looking round. “Where are the – Good Heavens!”

      With a start, productive for the moment of a closer partnership between Jonathan Snitchey and Thomas Craggs than the subsisting articles of agreement in that wise contemplated, he hastily betook himself to where the sisters stood together, and – however, I needn’t more particularly explain his manner of saluting Marion first, and Grace afterwards, than by hinting that Mr. Craggs may possibly have considered it “too easy.”

      Perhaps to change the subject, Doctor Jeddler made a hasty move towards the breakfast, and they all sat down at table. Grace presided; but so discreetly stationed herself, as to cut off her sister and Alfred from the rest of the company. Snitchey and Craggs sat at opposite corners, with the blue bag between them for safety; and the Doctor took his usual position, opposite to Grace. Clemency hovered galvanically about the table, as waitress; and the melancholy Britain, at another and a smaller board, acted as Grand Carver of a round of beef, and a ham.

      “Meat?” СКАЧАТЬ