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Commentary. Robert Browning -Роберт Браунинг, английский поэт, автор философских насыщенных поэм, близких к психологической драме

Robert Browning -Роберт Браунинг, английский поэт, автор философских насыщенных поэм, близких к психологической драме

a guinea pig – морская свинка

to make a crack about something – отпустить шутку (насчет)

centerpiece – главный экспонат (украшение), гвоздь программы

bittersweet – зд. паслен (декоративное растение)

“House and Garden” – “Дом и сад”, журнал об интерьерном дизайне и декоративном садоводстве

a heather tweed sport coat – спортивное пальто из твида цвета вереска (heather, серо- или розово-лиловый цвет)

Paul Gallico – известный американский журналист и писатель, автор коротких рассказов (1897-1976)

expletives – вставное слово, слово-паразит или бранное слово, напр. “Thank God”, “Goodness”, “Heaven(s)”, характерно для разговорного языка

grillе – решетка (зд. радиатора)

fenders skirt -подкрылок

tail fin – зд. задние крылья (автом.)

intake duration – тактовая частота

manifold pressure gauge – датчик давления

Exercise 1. Practise the pronunciation of the following words:

1. adorable [R'dO:r(R)bl] 5. indefatigable [LIndI'fWtIgRb(R)l]

2. twinge [twIndG] 6. aura ['O:rR]

3. audaciously [O:'deISRslI] 7. aghast [R'gQ:st]

4. intricate ['IntrIkIt] 8. unhesitantly [An'hezIt(R)ntlI]

Exercise 2. Read the following extract:

There was a sudden sharp freeze, and during the next week end everyone was busy sharpening ice skates. Jane had hers slung over her shoulder when she walked up the hill to thank Peter for his telegram. The crowd would already be congregating at the mill dam, but since she felt sure that Peter would be waiting she didn’t want to disappoint him — not when he had been so nice.

He met her just as the climb was beginning to pull at the backs of her legs, and to her surprise he also was carrying skates. “Don’t tell me my attempt at telepathy worked!” he cried in surprise. Then, with the look of a person accustomed to disappointment, he asked, “Or are you on your way to meet someone else, so you can’t go skating with me?”

Because she had come to understand loneliness in these past few months, Jane recognized its symptoms in Peter. Quick as a flash, so he wouldn’t think she was fibbing, she said, “I hadn’t any special plans.”

“Splendid!” He took her arm and turned her around. “Where shall we go – to the dam?”

Jane’s heart missed a beat. She had expected him to suggest the open-air rink in Carlinville. At the dam she would meet all the gang from school, and to appear without warning accompanied by a boy as “different” as Peter Shakespeare would certainly provoke comment. But something had happened to Jane since the yearbook election. She was beginning to worry less about what people thought. Suppose they did laugh at Peter behind his back! She didn’t care. She liked him.

“Fine,” she said, with only the slightest hesitation.

“That’s where I was going anyway.” Then she felt she had better warn him. “We’ll probably run into some of Brookfield High crowd. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” said Peter, in his clipped British manner. “I think it would be rather jolly.”

Jane smiled. “I want to tell you something right away.” Imitating his accent to the best of her ability, she said, “I think it was rather jolly of you to send me that telegram. I was never so surprised!”

The English boy grinned. “Did you like it?”

Still clowning, Jane replied. “Rawther!” Then pure merriment bubbled up inside her and her laughter rang across the hills. “Quite seriously,” she said after a minute, “it was very thoughtful. Besides, I’ve never had a telegram sent to me before.”

“Really?” Peter seemed surprised, then pondered aloud. “No, I suppose not, because everyone in the States has a telephone.”

This remark surprised Jane. Every once in a while Peter said something that made her wonder about his background. Was he as poor as his clothes might indicate? Yet his speech was that of a well-bred person. Since that first Sunday when he had mentioned his father’s death, he had offered no personal confidences. Their talk was always interesting and often amusing, but it dwelt on books or ideas.

Perhaps because of this, Peter was a comfortable person to be with, Jane decided, as they cut across town toward the pond. She felt no compulsion to flirt with him; and since they had no acquaintances in common, the conversation never became bogged down with personalities. He made her feel free and easy, as she had once upon a time felt with Ken.

Not that the two boys were in the least alike, really. Peter was more mature, closer to being a man than a boy. In comparison, Ken, with his stubborn enthusiasm, seemed unsophisticated and very young.

Ken, as a matter of fact, was the first person Jane saw when they arrived at the dam. He was crouched on the bank tying a broken lace, and he looked up and called, “Hi,” rather soberly, then glanced at Peter in considerable surprise.

“Hi,” Jane called back in return, glad that they weren’t close enough to make an introduction necessary. She found a fallen log and kicked off her loafers, then demurred when Peter insisted on helping her to put on her skates.

“It’s not in the least necessary,” she told him, pulling and tugging. “American girls are perfectly capable, you know.” Then, when he paid no attention, she added, “It makes me feel silly. Please let me do it myself!”

With a laugh, Peter obliged. “ ‘As frank as rain on cherry blossom,’ ” he murmured, standing above her.

“What’s that?”

“A quotation. Browning.”

“Oh,” Jane murmured, as she tied a double knot. Peter did say the strangest things!

She waited until he was ready to follow her out on the ice, then started toward the far end of the pond, skating swiftly. Peter, staying close beside her, glided across the ice with an ease that matched her own. For a rather stocky boy, he was exceptionally graceful on skates, she realized quickly. The sport became him, and so did the cold air, which whipped his cheeks to scarlet. He grinned at Jane happily and said, “You skate well.”

“So do you.”

They turned just before the mouth of Thompson’s Creek. Here the trees leaned over the pond in a sheltering fashion and the wind was less harsh. Returning, they skated slowly, arm in arm, talking. Jane was almost face to face with Linda before she saw her, but her sister, who was practicing figure eights, was not equally absorbed. “Hello there,” she said, braking and skating across their path. “Remember me?”

Jane, aware that she was staring at Peter curiously, wished she could read Belinda’s mind. Was she critical or approving, interested or unconcerned?

Peter and Jane pulled up and stopped. “Hi, Linda,” said Jane, so anxious to be casual that she almost overdid it. “This is my sister, Peter. Belinda, Peter Shakespeare.” She murmured the last name unintelligibly.

But it wouldn’t have mattered if she had spelled it out. Belinda was interested in the boy, not the name. She put forth a mittened hand prettily and smiled that engaging smile which Jane knew so well. With most boys its effect was deadly but foolishly wasteful, like firing a cannon at a guinea pig. As Jane waited for Peter to react, cold fury surged through her once more. Would she never be allowed to have anything of her own?

“Hello, Peter.” Belinda’s voice was subtly inviting.

“Hello.” Peter shook hands firmly, but without lingering. “I didn’t know you had a younger sister,” he said to Jen.

“I guess I never told your!”

“Ooh!” cried Belinda. “Have you known each other long?”

Jane shrugged. “A while.” She glanced toward the dam, where a good-sized group had gathered since their arrival. “Come on, Peter, I want you to meet the crowd.”

They skated away while Linda stared after them, puzzled. When Jack Preston came over to join her a few minutes later, she asked, “Where did Jane pick up the English boy? D’you know?”

Jack shook his head. “I just met him. Seems like a right guy. Boy, he sure can skate!”

As Jane introduced Peter to Polly, Trudy, and Stitch, whose first date with Belinda bad been his last (she makes me feel like an old man, he admitted to Gordon), it began to occur to her that he was one lad who might not be subject to Linda’s charms. He hadn’t asked leading questions, hadn’t even glanced back. And what was it he had said that day on the hill? He liked very natural girls.

One thing was certain. There was no use trying to avoid Linda. If she wanted Peter and could get him, there was no doubt in Jane’s mind that she would. Belinda could be quite innocently ruthless. But this time Jane wasn’t going to run away from the fire. She was going to walk into it.

A few minutes later she asked Peter if he would like to come for Thanksgiving dinner next Thursday. She knew her mother wouldn’t mind.

“Why, thanks awfully,” Peter said, looking delighted. “Are you sure it would be all right? After all...”

“I’m quite sure,” Jane replied. “But call me tomorrow night if you like. Just so that I can give you an approximate time.”

Somebody had turned up a car radio, over by the bridge, and Trudy and Stitch were waltzing. Peter put out his arms and, with a deliberately comical flourish, murmured, “Shall we dance?”

In the next few minutes she recognized that this boy was more than a good skater. He was the best on the ice. He lifted her from mediocrity to something new and exiting. When the finally stopped, as Jane became breathless, Trudy and the rest crowded around, begging Peter to show them the steps and turns he had been teaching Jane.

Peter was very obliging and an excellent teacher. While he was skating with Polly, Trudy came over to Jane. “Where did you ever find him?” she whispered. “I think he’s adorable.”

Jane laughed. Adorable was such an inadequate word to use for Peter Shakespeare. “I found him on the hill behind the golf course,” she explained, adding with unconvincing truthfulness, “He tripped over me in the grass.”

Belinda, now with Ken, drifted past. Linda was a cautious skater and liked to practice, but Ken was carefree and daring on the ice. They made a strange pair, in consequence, which the difference in their heights accentuated. Jane glanced after them without the usual twinge of envy. She felt almost sorry for Ken these days. Quitting the football team had definitely hurt his standing with the crowd. If he wasn’t being ostracized he was coming mighty close to it. And Belinda, consequently, was willing to give him less and less of her time.

Right now she looked pouty and irritable, as though she wished she could trade him in and join the group around Polly and Peter. “Come on over!” Jane invited audaciously when they passed within calling distance.

Ken watched a few minutes, then put his hand on Jane’s arm to attract her attention. “Come show me that step, will you?”

“I’m not sure that I can, but I’ll try.” Jane moved off with him to a clear patch of ice. For the first time since the beginning of school she found herself treating him as she always had, with friendly acceptance. He was an interested pupil, and in a very few minutes was almost as proficient as the English boy.

“That’s a neat one!” he cried.

Finishing with his impromptu class, Peter skated over to them, and Jane introduced Ken. The boys shook hands, sizing one another up, and evidently liking what they found. In no time at all they were vying in executing intricate figures, with Peter easily the more skilful, but Ken game to try over and over again.

Jane stood by, watching. The tip of her nose was red from the cold and her fingers were stiff and aching, but she scarcely noticed. A half-forgotten sensation swept her — a feeling of warmth and peace that had nothing to do with the chill winter air. But why should I feel particularly content? she wondered. Nothing has changed.

And yet, she realized, as she kept her skates just barely in motion and hovered on the outskirts of the group, everything had changed. She had become a different person in the past few months. The girl she had been, the girl who lay dreaming last August in the tree house, was gone forever. The new Jane was more aware, more complicated, but at the same time more tolerant. And she no longer expected life to be nothing but a happy song.

She wasn’t Jane now knew beyond dispute, the sort of person who could go sailing along on the crest of the wave, like Belinda. Beauty, when it was being handed out in the Howard family, had passed her by. She’d never look at a boy and know he was thinking, She sure is pretty! Never. It was something she had learned to face.

How far she had come since the day on the hill when she had lain in the grass and taken stock of her failures and disappointments! She no longer craved the unobtainable. Instead, she was beginning to enjoy the things she had. What was it her mother had tried to impress upon her? People who have not had too easy a time of it develop flavor. In a way, Jane was discovering, this was true.

She let Peter walk all the way home with her and would have invited him in, but he glanced at his watch and said, “Whoops, I’ve got to be stepping!”

“Don’t forget to call me tomorrow night.”

“I won’t. It’s been a wonderful afternoon — the best I’ve had since I left home. Thank you.”

“Thank you! ”Jane said, and meant it. She watched him as he strode quickly down the street. A nice boy, she thought, gratefully. A very nice boy.

* * *

Sue, with her good hand, passed the note to Stitch and Stitch passed it to Jane.

“Can I see you for a minute after class?” Gordon had written. “Y.B. biz.”

Jane glanced at him across the room and nodded. “How about going down to the office?” she suggested at the door. “I’ve got a free period.”

“Swell! So have I.”

They already had their heads together, conferring, as they crossed the auditorium, where senior study hall was about to convene.

“You kids certainly are as thick as thieves these days,” Ken, who was sitting on the front row, complained, as Jane stumbled over his long legs.

“Sure,” Gordon shot back. “We’re keeping steady company. Didn’t you know?”

Did Ken look just the least bit disgruntled, or was she imagining it, Jane wondered, as she walked on. She was aware that he was watching as Gordon held the office door open for her, but it could have been mere idle-curiosity. Then, dropping her books on the table, she forgot everything but the business at hand.

Gordon had proved to be an exceptionally good advertising manager. With the same dogged patience he applied to building a fire or reading up on archaeology, he explored the possibility of increasing the yearbook revenue by selling more space.

Already they were talking about adding an extra form to take care of the ads he had wheeled from Local businessmen and shopkeepers. He had outsold his quota, topped Ken’s record of last year, and still had only been working a couple of weeks.

“How do you do it?” Jane asked. “It’s positively phenomenal.”

Gordon grinned. “I keep after ‘em,” he said. “After all, I have plenty of time, afternoons. Maybe it’s lucky I’m not the athletic type.”

“Maybe it is,” Jane agreed. She smiled at him with friendly admiration, remembering that she had once thought him hopelessly dull. Actually, he was still just as dull, she supposed, but his good qualities cancelled out his bad ones. He was loyal, business-like, indefatigable, and the best right-hand man she could possibly have.

At the moment he wanted to tell her about his interview with the owner of Hannum’s garage. “He’ll put the money on the line for a full-page ad if we ran a picture spread on hot rods and give him a publicity break,” he explained.

“What do you mean, publicity break?”

“Just mention the garage. That’s all.”

Jane frowned. “I’m not sure about that, Gordon. Wouldn’t it look rather... well, obvious?”

“It might,” Gordon agreed, “unless we could work it into a caption. Take a picture of somebody’s car that’s always in for repairs, say, and make a crack about it.”

“Ken’s Caddy is there right now,” said Jane.

“Yeah, I thought of that. But Ken’s not too well thought of at the moment. It might not be good publicity for Hannum at all.”

Gordon’s statement was undoubtedly logical, but his words stung Jane as painfully as though she had been their butt. It shocker her to realize that public opinion had turned against Ken – even popular, easy-going, enthusiastic Ken – because he had made just one false move.

But was it false? “I’ve got to do what I think is right,” he had said to her father. “Even if the whole school — or the whole world — thinks it’s wrong.”

She found herself repeating this to Gordon and telling him about the family argument that had occasioned it, with Belinda and her father taking one side and she and her mother the other. “It’s a hard thing to decide what is black and what is white,” she said. “I used to think it was easy,” she added with a chuckle, “but now I’m beginning to see everything in shades of grey.”

Toying with a pencil, Gordon sat for a while without speaking; then he suggested gently, “Suppose we let it ride for a while. Public opinion’s fickle. Maybe things will work out if we don’t start pushing too hard.” His eyes met Jane’s with no sign of impatience, and he waited for her reply.

She said, “O.K. Thanks.”

* * *

For most meals the Howards used place mats on the polished mahogany table, but for Thanksgiving and Christmas they always brought out a snowy white damask tablecloth and the best monogrammed napkins. In Jane’s mind these accessories always indicated a special event.

Today, as she placed the silver and glassware with meticulous care, she was glad that it was Peter, instead of one of her mother’s lame ducks, who was coming to dinner. It lent the day a special aura of festivity and made the roasting turkey smell particularly good.

“Anything I can do?” Belinda wandered into the dining room in a blue flannel robe and fuzzy white slippers. On holidays she loved to loaf until noon without dressing, and her mother indulged her in this harmless pleasure.

“You might tell me,” said Jane, “whether this centerpiece looks right.” She had made an arrangement of a few crisp brown leaves, some bittersweet, three apples, a small pumpkin, and a handsome bunch of Belgian grapes. Standing back to eye it critically, she wondered if it didn’t seem lopsided, the pumpkin lending too much weight.

But Linda said, “I think it’s heavenly. It looks like something out of House and Garden. ”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I mean it.” Linda walked to the sideboard. “Want me to set up the tray for after-dinner coffee?”

“If you like,” Jane said, and went out to the kitchen with the silver salt boats, which needed cleaning. As she stood at the table, rubbing on the polish, she noticed Ken talking to a couple of strange boys, near the garage. A few minutes later they disappeared into it, then reappeared carrying two car doors, an armful of chrome strips, and a fender which the loaded into a Jeep. Some money was exchanged and Ken went into the house, whistling. He looked like a cat, Jane thought, that had just swallowed the cream.

Just then Mrs. Howard came out of the Sandersons’ side door and hurried through a gap in the hedge worn by the years of neighbourly visiting. “Set two extra places,” she called, as she came through the kitchen. “Ben is still away, so I’ve asked Audrey and Ken to come over for dinner. George’s sick with a cold, but Audrey can get a sitter for a couple of hours. I think they need cheering up.”

“Now Mother’s perfectly happy,” Linda said, as Jane came back into the dining room. “I knew the size of that turkey was bothering her. She likes a full house.”

She did indeed, and Jane knew that her particular kind of hospitality gave their holidays a special zest. If it wasn’t Miss Plunkett, it had to be somebody else. And Peter Shakespeare, as Jane had described him, didn’t sound needy enough.

Nor did he look needy, when he arrived at about four o’clock with a thin oblong package under his arm. He had abandoned the patched jacket for a heather tweed sport coat of more recent vintage, and he wore a pair of gray flannels which were just baggy enough to look comfortable.

He held the package out to Mrs. Howard as soon as introductions had been made. “This is something I thought you and Jane might enjoy.”

It was a lender volume by Paul Gallico, with a carnival scene on the jacket, and it was called Love of Seven Dolls.

“I hope you haven’t read it.”

“I haven’t,” Mrs. Howard said, thanking Peter. “But I loved The Snow Goose, and I know I’ll enjoy this.” She held it out to Jane. “So will you.”

“What about me?” asked Linda, pouting prettily.

Peter shook his head. “You’re too young.”

Jane almost laughed out loud. He hadn’t meant to set Belinda back on her heels, but he had managed it very neatly. She tossed her head indignantly and for the next half hour treated Peter with open contempt.

But if the English boy noticed this he certainly didn’t let it bother him. He talked easily with Mr. Howard, Jane, and her mother, who whispered to her daughter when they met a little later in the kitchen, “That’s one very attractive boy!”

“I’m glad you think so,” said Jane. “He’s different.”

Mrs. Howard, who seldom used expletives, said, “Yes, thank heaven!”

Jane turned in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“I get awfully tired of the callow youths who’ve been hanging around Linda lately, that’s all.”

“Ken isn’t especially callow.” Jane’s defence was quicker than thought.

Her mother grinned impishly as she basted the turkey for the last time. “Isn’t he? I think he’s been acting in a very calflike manner.”

“Ken’s in trouble,” Jane said. “Everybody’s against him. First his father, then the whole student body, and now Belinda. I feel sorry for Ken.”

But at the dinner table, a little later, Jane’s sorrow didn’t show. Belinda, who had forgotten her pique, was again trying to capture Peter’s attention, and Ken sat watching the byplay with a brooding expression that Jane interpreted as jealousy.

Deliberately she began playing up to the English boy, tossing the conversation his way whenever possible, outdoing Belinda at her own game, but on a different level. Let Ken learn the corroding taste of jealousy, she thought, without realizing that she was keeping her own wounds open.

Peter, apparently unaware that he was a pawn in the game being played between the sisters, talked easily as well, but addressed himself primarily to the adults, who gradually took over the conversation.

For once Belinda was outclassed. The discourse was over her head; and though she didn’t actually squirm she became increasingly restless, until her mother said, as soon as her dessert was finished, “Linda, would you like to be excused?”

The rebuff, Jane realized without sympathy, made her sister feel like a baby. She flushed with embarrassment but said, very sweetly, “Thank you, no.”

A few minutes later they all went into the living room for coffee, but Ken didn’t sit down. He thanked Mrs. Howard for a delicious dinner, then explained that he had an appointment. As Jane pretended complete lack of interest and Belinda once more turned her starry gaze on Peter, Ken shook hands with the hostess and said, in a conspiratorial stage whisper, “Big deal!”

Ken’s appointment was right next door, and his “deal” was put through in full view of the Howards’ living-room windows. Two strange men and a big, raw-boned young woman arrived in a jeep station wagon and departed bearing a grille, a fender skirt, two tail fins, and some other, unidentifiable objects.

Peter watched this operation with undisguised interest. “It looks as though Ken is in the spare-parts business,” he said to Mrs. Sanderson, who was just about to go back to George.

She nodded and sighed. “You should see our basement!”

“I’d like to.”

Jane went directly inside the house with Mrs. Sanderson, while Peter joined Ken in the yard. She was seeing the Sandersons’ basement for the first time since summer. Aghast, she stood and surveyed a jungle of discarded metal.

Ken, who had just come in from outside with Peter, surveyed the accumulation proudly. “Bargains,” he said with a sweeping gesture. “All of ‘em.”

There must, Jane computed rapidly as she walked down the stairs, be the equivalent of two or three Cadillacs in spare parts stacked against the walls. “B-but, Ken,” she cried, “what are you going to do with all this junk?”

“It isn’t junk!” Ken retorted indignantly. “It’s an investment.

The boys began talking technicalities. Jane realized that Peter knew a good deal about cars, but she deliberately shut her mind to such phrases as “intake duration” and “manifold pressure gauge.” She wished she could share Ken’s belief that his father could be won over but as she wandered back and forth across the concrete floor and peered at the motley accumulation she became more and more dubious. Besides, Mr. Sanderson’s ultimatum was still ringing in her ears.

It also occurred to her that on his return he would hear the news of Eric’s crack-up and Sue Harvey’s broken arm. This wouldn’t be soothing; neither would he be apt to condone Ken’s quitting the football team. All in all, the outlook was more than gloomy; it was positively bleak.

But it was Ken’s outlook, Ken’s future, Jane told herself with a shake of her shoulders — not hers. Why should she worry about the results of his latest folly? It seemed to her that he had managed to leap very quickly and the unhesitantly from the frying pan into the fire, and if he were turned to a grey ash why should it mean anything to her? After all, she had other things to think about – the yearbook, Peter Shakespeare. And Christmas was coming, too...

Exercise 3. Find the following words and word combinations in the text you have read. Write out and learn the pronunciation. Give the Russian equivalents:

1. to sling (slung/slung) over one’s shoulder

2. to be on one’s way to do smth

3. a well-bred person (to breed-bred-bred)

4. to dwell-(dwelt-dwelt) on/upon smth

5. to feel compulsion to do smth

6. to become smb.

7. to lean over (leant-leant)

8. to be subject to smth.

9. to vie in doing smth

10. to stride-strode-stridden

11. to stumble over smth.

12. to cancel out smth.

13. to indulge smb. in smth

14. to outdo smb. at smth.

15. to be outclassed

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