Лонгборн

Жизнь, как давно поняла миссис Хилл, представляла собой испытание на прочность, которого в конечном итоге не выдерживал никто.

Миссис Хилл размышляла, каково это - быть молодой, привлекательной и прекрасно это осознавать. Каково жить с уверенностью, что тебе нужна лишь самая что ни на есть искренняя любовь и полная взаимность и на меньшее ты не согласна.

If he loved Sarah, then it meant that he was, despite all that he had done, and all that he had failed to do, capable of feeling, and capable of good. Because he wanted nothing from her: this was a generous, expansive feeling, unattached to the possibility of gratification; it was a simple happiness that came from knowing that one particular person was alive in the world. He felt grateful for it; grateful that she had, however unwittingly, enabled him to feel like this.

It was so extraordinary: how did it all start, property and wealth and beauty like that? Who staked out a fence, strung out lines and said, This is my land and nobody else’s; these fields are mine, these woods are mine; this water, reflecting the white moon is mine; and all the fish that swim in that water are mine; and all the birds that fly and roost in the woods are mine; and the very air is mine while it moves over my land; and all of this will be mine, and after I am gone, it will be my son’s; and it will never leave our hands, not while there are sons left to inherit it. Because there was, there must have been a time before, when the fish swam and the fowl flew and were not anybody’s at all, and the world was young, when Adam and Eve staggered out of Eden all baffled and ashamed.

Sarah wondered what it could be like, to live like this - life as a country dance, where everything is lovely, and graceful, and ordered, and every single turn is preordained, and not a foot may be set outside the measure. Not like Sarah’s own out-in-all-weathers haul and trudge, the wind howling and blustery, the creeping flowers in the hedgerows, the sudden sunshine.