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Саки. Место для вола. Ч.2

Saki

The Stalled Ox

Part 2

On a fine afternoon in late autumn he was putting some finishing touches to a study of meadow weeds when his neighbour, Adela Pingsford, assailed the outer door of his studio with loud peremptory (не допускающий возражения) knockings.

‘There is an ox in my garden,’ she announced, in explanation of the tempestuous intrusion.

‘An ox,’ said Eshley blankly, and rather fatuously; ‘what kind of ox?’

‘Oh, I don’t know what kind,’ snapped the lady.  ‘A common or garden ox, to use the slang expression.  It is the garden part of it that I object to.  My garden has just been put straight for the winter, and an ox roaming about in it won’t improve matters.  Besides, there are the chrysanthemums (хризантемы) just coming into flower.’

‘How did it get into the garden?’ asked Eshley.

‘I imagine it came in by the gate,’ said the lady impatiently; ‘it couldn’t have climbed the walls, and I don’t suppose anyone dropped it from an aeroplane as a Bovril (‘Боврил’ – мясной экстракт для бульона) advertisement.  The immediately important question is not how it got in, but how to get it out.’

‘Won’t it go?’ said Eshley.

‘If it was anxious to go,’ said Adela Pingsford rather angrily, ‘I should not have come here to chat with you about it.  I’m practically all alone; the housemaid is having her afternoon out and the cook is lying down with an attack of neuralgia (приступ невралгии).  Anything that I may have learned at school or in after life about how to remove a large ox from a small garden seems to have escaped from my memory now.  All I could think of was that you were a near neighbour and a cattle painter, presumably more or less familiar with the subjects that you painted, and that you might be of some slight assistance.  Possibly I was mistaken.’

‘I paint dairy cows, certainly,' admitted Eshley, 'but I cannot claim to have had any experience in rounding-up stray oxen.  I’ve seen it done on a cinema film, of course, but there were always horses and lots of other accessories; besides, one never knows how much of those pictures are faked.’