get, and came back and made a fire, and got our books, and arranged our collection of seaweed and shells. By twelve o’clock, with the sun pouring into the room, the heat became quite oppressive, and we wondered when those heavy showers and occasional thunderstorms were going to begin.
“Ah! They’ll come in the afternoon, you’ll find,” we said to each other. “Oh, won’t those people get wet. What a lark!61”
At one o’clock, the landlady came in to ask if we weren’t going out, as it seemed such a lovely day.
“No, no,” we replied, with a knowing chuckle, “not we. We don’t mean to get wet – no, no.”
And when the afternoon was nearly gone, and still there was no sign of rain, we tried to cheer ourselves up with the idea that it would come down all at once, just as the people had started for home, and were out of the reach of any shelter62, and that they would thus get more soaked than ever. But not a drop ever fell, and it finished a grand day, and a lovely night after it.
The next morning we read that it was going to be a “warm, fine day; much heat;” and we put light clothing on, and went out, and, half-an-hour after we had started, it began raining hard, and an extremely cold wind sprang up, and both would keep on steadily for the whole day, and we came home with colds and rheumatism all over us, and went to bed.
The weather is a thing that is beyond me63 altogether. I never can understand it. The barometer is useless: it is as misleading as the newspaper forecast.
There was one barometer hanging up in a hotel at Oxford at which I was staying last spring, and, when I got there, it was pointing to “set fair64.” It was simply pouring with rain outside, and had been all day; and I couldn’t quite make matters out65. I tapped the barometer, and it jumped up and pointed to “very dry.” I tapped it again the next morning, and it went up still higher, and the rain came down faster than ever. On Wednesday I went and hit it again, and the pointer went round towards “set fair,” “very dry,” and “much heat,” until it was stopped by the peg, and couldn’t go any further. It tried its best, it evidently wanted to go on, and prognosticate drought, and water famine, and sunstroke, and such things, but the peg prevented it, and it had to be content with pointing to the commonplace “very dry.”
Meanwhile, the rain came down in a steady torrent, and the lower part of the town was under water, because the river had overflowed. The fine weather never came that summer. I expect that machine must have been referring to the following spring.
Then there are those new styles of barometers, the long straight ones. I never can make head or tail of those66. There is one side for 10 a.m. yesterday and one side for 10 a.m. today; but you can’t always get there as early as ten, you know. It rises or falls for rain and fine, with much or less wind, and if you tap it, it doesn’t tell you anything. And you’ve to correct it to sea-level, and reduce it to Fahrenheit, and even then I don’t know the answer.
But who wants to be foretold the weather? When it becomes bad enough, we don’t want to have the misery of knowing about it beforehand. The prophet we like is the old man who, on the particularly gloomy-looking morning of some day when we particularly want it to be fine, looks round the horizon with a particularly knowing eye, and says:
“Oh no, sir, I think it will clear up all right. It will break67 all right enough, sir.”
“Ah, he knows”, we say, as we wish him good morning, and start off; “wonderful how these old fellows can tell!”
And we feel affection for that man which is not at all lessened by the circumstances of its not clearing up, but continuing to rain steadily all day.
“Ah, well,” we feel, “he did his best.”
Of the man that prophesies us bad weather, on the contrary, we have only bitter and revengeful thoughts.
“Going to clear up, do you think?” we shout, joyfully, as we pass.
“Well, no, sir; I’m afraid it’s settled down68 for the day,” he replies, shaking his head.
“Stupid old fool!” we mutter, “what’s he know about it?” And, if his words prove correct, we come back feeling still more angry with him, and with a vague feeling that, somehow or other, he has had something to do with69 it.
It was too bright and sunny on this especial morning for George’s gloomy readings about bad weather to upset us very much: and so, finding that he could not disappoint us, and was only wasting his time, he stole the cigarette that I had carefully rolled up for myself, and went.
Then Harris and I, having finished up the few things left on the table, carried out our luggage on to the doorstep, and waited for a cab.
There seemed a good deal of luggage, when we put it all together. There was the Gladstone70 and the small hand-bag, and the two hampers, and a large roll of rugs, and some four or five overcoats and mackintoshes, and a few umbrellas, and then there was a melon by itself in a bag, because it was too bulky to go in anywhere, and a couple of pounds of grapes in another bag, and a Japanese paper umbrella, and a frying pan, which, being too long to pack, we had wrapped round with brown paper.
It did look a lot, and Harris and I began to feel rather ashamed of it, though why we should be, I can’t see. No cab came by, but the street boys did, and got interested in the show, apparently, and stopped.
Biggs’s boy was the first to come round. Biggs is our greengrocer, and his chief talent is to obtain the services of the most abandoned and unprincipled errand-boys71 that civilisation has ever produced. If anything more than usually wicked in the boy line happens in our neighbourhood, we know that it is Biggs’s latest boy. I was told that, at the time of the Great Coram Street murder72, it was quickly concluded by our street that Biggs’s boy (for that period) was at the bottom of it73. In reply to the severe cross-examination to which he was subjected, when he came for orders the morning after the crime, he managed to prove a complete alibi. Otherwise it would have gone hard with him. I didn’t know Biggs’s boy at that time, but, from what I have seen of them since, I should not have attached much importance to that alibi74 myself.
Biggs’s boy, as I have said, came round the corner. He was evidently in a great hurry, but, on catching sight of Harris and me, and Montmorency, and the things, he stopped up and stared. Harris and I frowned at him. This might have wounded a more sensitive nature, but Biggs’s boys are not, as a rule, touchy. He came to a dead stop, a yard from our step, and, leaning up against the railings, and fixed his eyes on us, he evidently meant to see this thing out75.
In another moment, the grocer’s boy passed on the opposite side of the street. Biggs’s boy cried to him:
“Hi! They are moving.”
The grocer’s boy came
What a lark! – Как забавно!
out of the reach of any shelter – вдали от всякого убежища
to be beyond smb – быть выше чьего-либо понимания
set fair – ясно
I couldn’t quite make matters out – я не мог понять, в чем дело
to make head(s) or tail(s) of smb / smth – понять кого-то / что-то
it will break – прояснится
it’s settled down – установилось
to have something to do with – иметь какое-то отношение (к делу)
Gladstone – сумка Глэдстоун (вместительная дорожная сумка из коричневой кожи, появившаяся в Англии в конце XIX в., часто упоминается в произведениях британских классиков)
errand-boy – посыльный, курьер, мальчик на побегушках
Great Coram Street murder – 24 декабря 1872 г. на лондонской Грейт-Корам-cтрит в своей комнате была найдена девушка с перерезанным горлом, ее убийца так и не был найден. Есть предположения, что к этому убийству причастен Джек-потрошитель, потрясший Лондон серией подобных по почерку убийств в 1888 г., личность которого также остается неизвестной.
to be at the bottom of smth – быть настоящей причиной чего-либо
to attach importance to smth – придавать значение чему-либо
he evidently meant to see this thing out – он, очевидно, намеревался досмотреть все до конца
