| As his passion ebbed away, he could see her face again clearly, and her expression was tender and detached and almost maternal. | Когда схлынуло бурное желание, и он увидел ее лицо ясно, оно было нежным, отрешенным и почти материнским. |
| She was aware of his unhappiness as she had been aware of his lust for that splendid body of hers. | Она знала, что он несчастен, и что его влечет ее цветущее тело. |
| She had given him her body because of his crying need for it, as she might have given a cup of water to a man dying of thirst. | И она отдала ему свое тело, потому что он не мог без этого жить, как напоила бы умирающего от жажды. |
| Now she held his head to her breast, and stroked his hair, rocking a little as though he were a child, and murmuring little soothing words to him. | Теперь она прижимала его голову к своей груди, гладила его волосы, укачивала, как ребенка, шептала нежные, ласковые слова. |
| A tear fell from her eye on to Hornblower's temple. | Слеза скатилась по ее щеке на его затылок. |
| She had come to love this Englishman, but she knew only too well that it was not love which had brought him into her arms. | Она полюбила этого англичанина, но знала, что не любовь толкнула его в ее объятия. |
| She knew of the wife and child in England, she guessed at the existence of the other woman whom he loved. | Она знала, что в Англии у него жена и ребенок, и догадывалась о существовании другой женщины, которую он любит. |
| It was not the thought of them which brought the tears to her eyes; it was the knowledge that she was not any part of his real life, that this stay of his on the banks of the Loire was as unreal to him as a dream, something to be endured until he could escape again to the sea, into the mad world which to him was sanity, where every day he would encounter peril and discomfort. | Не из-за них выступили на ее глазах слезы, а из-за того, что ей нет места в его настоящей жизни, что эта остановка на берегу Луары призрачна для него, как сон, как временная помеха на пути к морю, к безумной жизни, которая для него единственно нормальна, где каждый день приносит тяготы и опасности. |
| These kisses he was giving her meant nothing to him compared with the business of life, which was war -the same war which had killed her young husband, the wasteful, prodigal, beastly business which had peopled Europe with widows and disfigured it with wasted fields and burned villages. | Он целует ее, но это ничто в сравнении с делом его жизни - войной, войной, убившей ее юного мужа, бессмысленной, разрушительной, гнусной бойней, которая наполнила Европу вдовами, спалила деревни, вытоптала поля. |
| He was kissing her as a man might pat his dog's head during an exciting business deal. | Он целовал ее, как другой за важной деловой беседой треплет по голове собаку. |
| Then Hornblower lifted his face to hers again, and read the tragedy in her eyes. | Хорнблауэр поднял лицо и прочел горе в ее глазах. |
| The sight of her tears moved him inexpressibly. | Слезы ее тронули его неимоверно. |
| He stroked her cheek. | Он погладил ее щеку. |
| "Oh, my dear," he said in English, and then began to try to find French words to express what he wanted to say. | - Милая, - сказал он по-английски и тут же стал подбирать французские слова, чтобы выразить свои чувства. |
| Tenderness was welling up within him. | Нежность переполняла его. |
| In a blinding moment of relevation he realized the love she bore him, and the motives which had brought her submissively into his arms. | Во внезапном прозрении он понял, что она его любит, понял, что толкнуло ее в его объятия. |
| He kissed her mouth, he brushed away the splendid red hair from her pleading eyes. | Он целовал ее в губы, он отбрасывал прекрасные рыжие волосы с молящих глаз. |
| Tenderness re-awoke passion; and under his caresses her last reserve broke down. | Нежность вновь пробудила страсть, и под его ласками рухнула ее последняя оборона. |
| "I love you!" she sighed, her arms about him. | -Я люблю тебя! - выдохнула она, обвивая его руками. |
| She had not meant to admit it, either to him or to herself. | Она не хотела сознаваться в этом ни ему, ни себе. |
| She knew that if she gave herself to him with passion he would break her heart in the end, and that he did not love her, not even now, when tenderness had replaced the blind lust in his eyes. | Она знала, что если отдаст ему себя целиком, то он разобьет ей сердце, и что он не любит ее, не любит даже сейчас, когда слепое вожделение в его глазах сменилось нежностью. |
| He would break her heart if she allowed herself to love him; for one more second she had that clairvoyance before she let herself sink into the self-deception which she knew in the future she would not believe to be self-deception. | Он разобьет ей сердце, если она позволит себе его полюбить, еще одну секунду она сознавала все это ясно, отчетливо, прежде чем поддаться самообольщению, которое со временем, она знала, не захочет признать самообольщением. |
| But the temptation to deceive herself into thinking he loved her was overwhelming. | Однако искушение поверить, что он ее любит, было необоримо. |
| She gave herself to him passionately. | Она сдалась. |
| CHAPTER TEN | Х |
| The affair thus consummated seemed, to Hornblower's mind at least, to clear the air like a thunderstorm. | Любовная связь подействовала, на Хорнблауэра по крайней мере, как живительная гроза после душного затишья. |
| He had something more definite to think about now than mystic speculations; there was Marie's loving kindness to soothe him, and for counter-irritant there was the pricking of his conscience regarding his seduction of his host's daughter-in-law under his host's roof. | Мистические домыслы улетучились, уступив место более определенным заботам, ласки Мари умиротворяли, а размякнуть не давали укоры совести, напоминавшей, что он соблазнил невестку своего благодетеля под его же кровом. |
| His uneasiness lest the Count's telepathic powers should enable him to guess at the secret he shared with Marie, the fear lest someone should intercept a glance or correctly interpret a gesture, kept his mind healthily active. | Опасения, что граф телепатически проникнет в их с Мари тайну, страх, что кто-нибудь перехватит взгляд или правильно истолкует жест - все это держало мозг в здоровом напряжении. |
| And the love-affair while it ran its course brought with it a queer unexpected happiness. | Разворачиваясь, роман приносил с собой странную, неожиданную радость. |
| Marie was everything Hornblower could desire as a mistress. | Мари, как любовница, обладала всем, о чем он мог мечтать. |
| By marriage she was of a family noble enough to satisfy his liking for lords, and yet the knowledge that she was of peasant birth saved him from feeling any awe on that account. | Аристократическая фамилия льстила его стремлению к знати, а крестьянское происхождение избавляло от благоговейного страха. |
| She could be tender and passionate, protective and yielding, practical and romantic; and she loved him so dearly, while at the same time she remained reconciled to his approaching departure and resolute to help it on in every way, that his heart softened towards her more and more with the passage of the days. | Она умела быть нежной и страстной, заботливой и покорной, разумной и романтичной; она любила его всем сердцем, но твердо знала, что он ее покинет, и готова была всячески этому помогать. С каждым днем он привязывался к ней все сильнее. |
| That departure suddenly became a much nearer and more likely possibility - by coincidence it seemed to come up over the horizon from the hoped-for into the expected only a day or two after Hornblower's meeting with Marie in the upper gallery. | Отъезд близился - по совпадению он из отдаленного превратился в ожидаемый всего лишь через день-два после того, как Хорнблауэр столкнулся с Мари на верхней галерее. |
| The boat was finished, and lay, painted and equipped, in the loft ready for them to use; Brown kept it filled with water from the well and proudly announced that it did not leak a drop. | Лодка была закончена. Она лежала, покрашенная и снаряженная, на чердаке, Браун налил в нее воды из колодца и с гордостью объявил, что она не течет. |
| The plans for their journey to the sea were taking definite shape. | Планы побега обретали четкость. |
| Fat Jeanne the cook baked biscuit for them -Hornblower came triumphantly into his own then, as the only person in the house who knew how ship's biscuit should be baked, and Jeanne worked under his supervision. | Толстая кухарка Жанна пекла сухари - тут Хорнблауэр вновь оказался на высоте, поскольку выяснилось - он единственный в доме знает, как печь флотские сухари, и Жанна трудилась под его руководством. |
| Anxious debate between him and the Count had ended in his deciding against running the risk of buying food while on their way unless compelled; the fifty pounds of biscuit which Jeanne baked for them (there was a locker in the boat in which to store it) would provide the three of them with a pound of bread each day for seventeen days, and there was a sack of potatoes waiting for them, and another of dried peas; and there were long thin Arles sausages -as dry as sticks, and, to Hornblower's mind, not much more digestible, but with the merit of staying eatable for long periods - and some of the dry cod which Hornblower had come to know during his captivity at Ferrol, and a corner of bacon; taken all in all - as Hornblower pointed out to the Count who was inclined to demur - they were going to fare better on their voyage down the Loire than they had often fared in the ships of His Majesty King George. |