Сборник лучших произведений американской классической литературы. Уровень 4. Джек Лондон

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “That's the secret of Castle Rackrent. Tell your chauffeur to go far away and spend an hour.”

      We went in. To my overwhelming surprise the living room was deserted.

      “Well, that's funny!” I exclaimed.

      “What's funny?”

      She turned her head as there was a light, dignified knocking at the front door. I went out and opened it. Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes.

      With his hands still in his coat pockets he stalked by me into the hall, turned sharply as if he were on a wire and disappeared into the living room. It wasn't a bit funny. Aware of the loud beating of my own heart I pulled the door to against the increasing rain.

      For half a minute there wasn't a sound. Then from the living room I heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh followed by Daisy's voice on a clear artificial note.

      “I certainly am awfully glad to see you again.”

      “We haven't met for many years,” said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be.

      “Five years next November.”

      The automatic quality of Gatsby's answer set us all back at least another minute. I had them both on their feet with the desperate suggestion that they help me make tea in the kitchen when the demoniac Finn brought it in on a tray.

      Amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a certain physical decency established itself. Gatsby got himself into a shadow and while Daisy and I talked looked conscientiously from one to the other of us with tense unhappy eyes. However, as calmness wasn't an end in itself I made an excuse at the first possible moment and got to my feet.

      “Where are you going?” demanded Gatsby in immediate alarm.

      “I'll be back.”

      “I've got to speak to you about something before you go.”

      He followed me wildly into the kitchen, closed the door and whispered: “Oh, God!” in a miserable way.

      “What's the matter?”

      “This is a terrible mistake,” he said, shaking his head from side to side, “a terrible, terrible mistake.”

      “You're just embarrassed, that's all,” and luckily I added, “Daisy's embarrassed too.”

      “She's embarrassed?” he repeated incredulously.

      “Just as much as you are.”

      “Don't talk so loud.”

      “You're acting like a little boy,” I broke out impatiently. “Not only that but you're rude. Daisy's sitting in there all alone.”

      He raised his hand to stop my words, looked at me with unforgettable reproach and opening the door cautiously went back into the other room.

      I went in – after making every possible noise in the kitchen short of pushing over the stove – but I don't believe they heard a sound. They were sitting at either end of the couch looking at each other as if some question had been asked or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone. Daisy's face was smeared with tears and when I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.

      “Oh, hello, old sport,” he said, as if he hadn't seen me for years. I thought for a moment he was going to shake hands.

      “I want you and Daisy to come over to my house,” he said, “I'd like to show her around.”

      “You're sure you want me to come?”

      “Absolutely, old sport.”

      Daisy went upstairs to wash her face – too late I thought with humiliation of my towels – while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn.

      “My house looks well, doesn't it?” he demanded. “See how the whole front of it catches the light.”

      I agreed that it was splendid.

      “Yes.” His eyes went over it, every arched door and square tower. “It took me just three years to earn the money that bought it.”

      “I thought you inherited your money.”

      “I did, old sport,” he said automatically, “but I lost most of it in the big panic – the panic of the war.”

      I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what business he was in he answered “That's my affair,” before he realized that it wasn't the appropriate reply.

      “Oh, I've been in several things[45],” he corrected himself. “I was in the drug business and then I was in the oil business. But I'm not in either one now.”

      Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of brass buttons on her dress gleamed in the sunlight.

      “That huge place THERE?” she cried pointing.

      “Do you like it?”

      “I love it, but I don't see how you live there all alone.”

      “I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. People who do interesting things. Celebrated people.”

      Daisy admired everything: the house, the gardens, the beach.

      He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs.

      His bedroom was the simplest room of all – except where the dresser was garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush with delight and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down and shaded his eyes and began to laugh.

      Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

      “I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”

      He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher – shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

      “They're such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I've never seen such – such beautiful shirts before.”

      Daisy СКАЧАТЬ