Смешные рассказы / The Funny Stories - - (книги серии онлайн .TXT) 📗

The battle was awfully hot; the allies were giving way all over the field [17]. Our regiment occupied a very important position; one mistake could destroy everything. At this critical moment, our fool orders the regiment to change its place and occupy a neighboring hill. 'This is the end,' I said to myself.

And we went away, and were very close to the hill. And what did we find? An entire Russian army! And what happened? Were we killed? That is what would happen in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians thought that a single regiment would not walk around there at such a time. It must be the whole English army; so they turned and ran away, and we after them; and the defeat of the allies turned into a victory! Marshal Canrobert sent for Scoresby, and hugged him, and awarded him on the field in presence of all the armies!

And what was Scoresby's mistake? Just the mistaking his right hand and his left – that was all. An order came to him to support our right; and instead he went to the left. But he won the name as a military genius, and his glory will never end.

He is good and sweet and lovable, but he doesn't know enough to come in home when it rains [18]. He was a soldier in all our wars for half a generation; he made all the mistakes he could, but never made a mistake that didn't make him a knight or a baronet or a lord or something. Look at his chest; at his medals. Well, sir, each of them is a proof of a stupidity; and, together, they are proof that the best thing in the world is to be born lucky.

The Open Window

H. H. Munro (Saki)

1

“My aunt will soon be down, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; “in the meantime you must try and put up with me.”

Framton Nuttel tried to say some compliments to the niece and not to upset the aunt that was to come. He doubted that these formal visits to total strangers would help his nerve cure.

“I know, you will bury yourself down there and not speak to anybody, and your nerves will be worse than before. I can give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as I can remember, were quite nice”, his sister said.

Framton wondered if Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of his letters, was one of these nice people.

“Do you know many the people round here?” asked the niece.

“No one,” said Framton. “My sister was staying here, at the priest's house, you know, four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here.”

He made the last statement in a tone of regret.

“Then you know almost nothing about my aunt?” continued the self-possessed young lady.

“Only her name and address,” he admitted. He was wondering if Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. Something in the room suggested man's habitation.

“Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,” said the child.

“Her tragedy?” asked Framton.

“You may wonder why we keep that window open on an October afternoon,” said the niece, pointing at a large French window.

“It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton; “but is that window connected with the tragedy?”

“Out through that window, three years ago, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their shooting. They never came back. When they were walking to their favorite shooting place they sank in a treacherous bog. It was a very wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years became deadly without warning. Their bodies were never found.” Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed tone and became human. “Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is open every evening till it is quite dark. Poor aunt, she often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her. Do you know, sometimes on quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window…”

She shivered. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt went down into the room with of apologies for being late.

“I hope Vera was friendly?” she said.

“She was very interesting,” said Framton.

“I hope you don't mind the open window,” said Mrs. Sappleton; “my husband and brothers will be home from shooting, and they always come in this way.”

She spoke cheerfully about the shooting and the birds. To Framton it was all purely horrible.

2

He made an effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic but he saw that the woman was giving him only a part of her attention, and her eyes were looking at the open window. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

“The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, no excitement, and no physical exercise,” said Framton, who thought that total strangers were interested in the details of one's illnesses. “On the matter of diet they are not in agreement,” he continued.

“No?” said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention – but not to what Framton was saying.

“Here they are!” she cried. “Just in time for tea, and they look as if they were dirty up to the eyes!”

Framton shivered a little and turned towards the niece with a look expressing sympathetic understanding. But the child was looking through the open window with a horror in her eyes. In a shock of nameless fear Framton looked in the same direction.

In the twilight three figures were walking across the yard towards the window, they all carried guns in their arms, and one of them had a white coat over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a young voice sang out of the dusk: “I said, Bertie, why do you bound?”

Framton grabbed wildly his stick and hat; the hall door and the front gate were stages in his retreat. A bicyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid the crash.

“Here we are, my dear,” said the owner of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window, “dirty, but most of it's dry. Who was that who ran out as we came up?”

“A very strange man, Mr. Nuttel,” said Mrs. Sappleton; “he could only talk about his illnesses, and ran off without a word of good bye or apology when you arrived as if you were ghosts.”

“I think it was because of the spaniel,” said the niece calmly; “he told me he had a fear of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the dogs grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their mind.”

She was very romantic.

Should Married Men Play Golf?

Jerome K. Jerome

People know that we Englishmen attach too much importance to sport, it is well-known, indeed. One can wait: some day some English novelist [19] will write a book, showing the evil effects of over-indulgence in sport [20]: the ruined business, the ruined home, the slow but sure [21] destroying of the brain, which leads to foolishness.