| BROWN WOLF | Джек Лондон Бурый волк |
| She had delayed, because of the dew-wet grass, in order to put on her overshoes, and when she emerged from the house found her waiting husband absorbed in the wonder of a bursting almond-bud. | Женщина вернулась надеть калоши, потому что трава была мокрая от росы, а когда она снова вышла на крыльцо, то увидела, что муж, поджидая ее, залюбовался прелестным распускающимся бутоном миндаля и забыл обо всем на свете. |
| She sent a questing glance across the tall grass and in and out among the orchard trees. | Она поглядела по сторонам, поискала глазами в высокой траве между фруктовыми деревьями. |
| "Where's Wolf?" she asked. | - Где Волк? - спросила она. |
| "He was here a moment ago." | - Только что был здесь. |
| Walt Irvine drew himself away with a jerk from the metaphysics and poetry of the organic miracle of blossom, and surveyed the landscape. | Уолт Ирвин оторвался от своих наблюдений над чудом расцветающего мира и тоже огляделся кругом. |
| "He was running a rabbit the last I saw of him." | - Мне помнится, я видел, как он погнался за кроликом. |
| "Wolf! | - Волк! |
| Wolf! | Волк! |
| Here Wolf!" she called, as they left the clearing and took the trail that led down through the waxen-belled manzanita jungle to the county road. | Сюда! - позвала Медж. И они пошли по усеянной восковыми колокольчиками тропинке, ведущей вниз через заросли мансаниты, на проселочную дорогу. |
| Irvine thrust between his lips the little finger of each hand and lent to her efforts a shrill whistling. | Ирвин сунул себе в рот оба мизинца, и его пронзительный свист присоединился к зову Медж. |
| She covered her ears hastily and made a wry grimace. | Она поспешно заткнула уши и нетерпеливо поморщилась: |
| "My! for a poet, delicately attuned and all the rest of it, you can make unlovely noises. | - Фу! Такой утонченный поэт - и вдруг издаешь такие отвратительные звуки! |
| My ear-drums are pierced. You outwhistle-" "Orpheus." "I was about to say a street-arab," she concluded severely. "Poesy does not prevent one from being practical-at least it doesn't prevent me. Mine is no futility of genius that can't sell gems to the magazines." He assumed a mock extravagance, and went on: "I am no attic singer, no ballroom warbler. And why? Because I am practical. Mine is no squalor of song that cannot transmute itself, with proper exchange value, into a flower-crowned cottage, a sweet mountain-meadow, a grove of redwoods, an orchard of thirty-seven trees, one long row of blackberries and two short rows of strawberries, to say nothing of a quarter of a mile of gurgling brook. I am a beauty-merchant, a trader in song, and I pursue utility, dear Madge. I sing a song, and thanks to the magazine editors I transmute my song into a waft of the west wind sighing through our redwoods, into a murmur of waters over mossy stones that sings back to me another song than the one I sang and yet the same song wonderfully-er-transmuted." "O that all your song-transmutations were as successful!" she laughed. "Name one that wasn't." "Those two beautiful sonnets that you transmuted into the cow that was accounted the worst milker in the township." "She was beautiful-" he began, "But she didn't give milk," Madge interrupted. "But she was beautiful, now, wasn't she?" he insisted. "And here's where beauty and utility fall out," was her reply. | У меня просто барабанные перепонки лопаются. Знаешь, ты, кажется, способен пересвистать уличного мальчишку. |
| "And there's the Wolf!" | - А-а! Вот и Волк. |
| From the thicket-covered hillside came a crashing of underbrush, and then, forty feet above them, on the edge of the sheer wall of rock, appeared a wolf’s head and shoulders. | Среди густой зелени холма послышался треск сухих веток, и внезапно на высоте сорока футов над ними, на краю отвесной скалы, появилась голова и туловище Волка. |
| His braced fore paws dislodged a pebble, and with sharp-pricked ears and peering eyes he watched the fall of the pebble till it struck at their feet. | Из-под его крепких, упершихся в землю передних лап вырвался камень, и он, насторожив уши, внимательно следил за этим летящим вниз камнем, пока тот не упал к их ногам. |
| Then he transferred his gaze and with open mouth laughed down at them. | Тогда он перевел свой взгляд на хозяев и, оскалив зубы, широко улыбнулся во всю пасть. |
| "You Wolf, you!" and | - Волк! Волк! |
| "You blessed Wolf!" the man and woman called out to him. | Милый Волк! - сразу в один голос закричали ему снизу мужчина и женщина. |
| The ears flattened back and down at the sound, and the head seemed to snuggle under the caress of an invisible hand. | Услышав их голоса, пес прижал уши и вытянул морду вперед, словно давая погладить себя невидимой руке. |
| They watched him scramble backward into the thicket, then proceeded on their way. | Потом Волк снова скрылся в чаще, а они, проводив его взглядом, пошли дальше. |
