The Sea Wolf / Морской волк. Книга для чтения на английском языке

They were eyes that masked the soul with a thousand guises, and that sometimes opened, at rare moments, and allowed it to rush up as though it were about to fare forth nakedly into the world on some wonderful adventure, – eyes that could brood with the hopeless sombreness of leaden skies; that could snap and crackle points of fire like those which sparkle from a whirling sword; that could grow chill as an arctic landscape, and yet again, that could warm and soften and be all a-dance with love-lights, intense and masculine, luring and compelling, which at the same time fascinate and dominate women till they surrender in a gladness of joy and of relief and sacrifice.

But to return. I told him that, unhappily for the burial service, I was not a preacher, when he sharply demanded:

“What do you do for a living?”

I confess I had never had such a question asked me before, nor had I ever canvassed it. I was quite taken aback, and before I could find myself had sillily stammered, “I – I am a gentleman.

His lip curled in a swift sneer.

“I have worked, I do work,” I cried impetuously, as though he were my judge and I required vindication, and at the same time very much aware of my arrant idiocy in discussing the subject at all.

“For your living?”

There was something so imperative and masterful about him that I was quite beside myself – “rattled,” as Furuseth would have termed it, like a quaking child before a stern school-master.

“Who feeds you?” was his next question.

“I have an income,” I answered stoutly, and could have bitten my tongue the next instant. “All of which, you will pardon my observing, has nothing whatsoever to do with what I wish to see you about[19 - has nothing whatsoever to do with what I wish to see you about – (разг.) это не имеет никакого отношения к тому, о чем я собирался говорить с вами].

But he disregarded my protest.

“Who earned it? Eh? I thought so. Your father. You stand on dead men’s legs[20 - stand on dead men’s legs – (разг.) живете за счет мертвецов]. You’ve never had any of your own. You couldn’t walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly for three meals. Let me see your hand.